MANHOOD^S 
MOI^NING 



JOSEPH ALFRED CONWELl 




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MANHOOD'S 
MORNING 



A BOOK to YOUNG MEN between FOUR- 
TEEN and TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS of AGE 



By 
JOSEPH ALFRED CONWELL 



' * * * Unio you youn^: men 
because ye are strong, ^* 



Fifteenth Thousand 



KE\t REVI&]^D 'F^l3t'j:ir;N'>' > ' ^ / } 



Philadelphia, Pa.: 1134 Real Estate Trust Bldg. 

The Vir Publishing Company 

London : 7 Imperial Arcade, Ludgate Circus, E. C. 



Toronto: Wm Briggs, 33 Richmond St., West 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copies Received 

OCT IT 1903 

C©py right Entry 
CLASS ^ XXc. No 

L '^ o f I \ 

COPY i3. \ 



^ 









Copyright, 1896, by M. RUSSELL. 



New Revised Edition. 

Copyright, 1903, 

BY SYLVANUS STALL. 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England. 

Protected by International copyright in Great Britain and all 
her colonies, and, under the provisions of the Berne Con- 
vention, in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Swit- 
zerland, Tunis, Hayti, Luxembourg, Monaco, Montenegro, 
and Norway. ^ . : 



All rights reserved. 



[printed in the united states.] 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
I. 

Thirteen million young men 17 



II. 

The best years of life 35 

III. 
What some young men have done 61 

IV. 

Wild oats and other weeds 105 

V. 
Reasons why young men go wrong 141 

VI. 
Paying the piper 181 

VII. 
What young men must be 219 

VIII. 
What young men must do 255 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO REVISED 
EDITION. 



Few things are treasured more than our best 
thoughts. Time only makes them more wel- 
come to the mind and more precious to the 
heart. To no one is this fact so manifest as to 
the one who throws his soul into a subject and 
after devoting days and nights to its develop- 
ment sends his labor forth to the world in the 
form of a book. 

Manhood's Morning was first issued seven 
years ago and although lacking in typographi- 
cal features it rapidly gained widespread at- 
tention. About twelve thousand copies have 
been published, and from every source have 
come hearty words of approval. 

In transferring the copyright to the Vir 
Publishing Company the author recognizes 
that the book is entering upon a new career 
where it will secure a more extensive patron- 
age and fill a more extended mission of useful- 
ness. 



Vll 



PUBLISHER'S NOTICE. 



The Vir Publishing Company herewith an- 
nounce that they have secured the copyright 
of Manhood's Morning, by Dr. Conwell, and 
will in the future issue the volume in its present 
form. The book has been revised by the 
author and such changes made as new con- 
ditions require. The book in its general 
features, admirably blends with those already 
issued and will be added to our regular Series 
of Publications. 

Dr. Joseph Alfred Conwell, the author of 
Manhood's Morning, was born in Delaware, 
forty-seven years ago, and graduated from 
Jefferson Medical College in 1880. In 1881 
he settled in Vineland, New Jersey, where he 
has taken a prominent part in the church, 
Young Men's Christian Association and other 
work of public interest. Dr. Conwell is at 
present the Mayor of the city of Vineland, he 
leading the reform forces on a non-partisan 
ticket. Manhood's Morning is a model book 



for young men and, as such, is acknowledged 
to be one of the best so far issued. The vol- 
ume is not a medical work. It can be read by 
young women as well as by young men, and 
can occupy a place on the centre-table. It 
covers a wide range of subjects and is com- 
prehensive in its scope. As a gift book to a 
young man between the age of fourteen and 
twenty-eight years it has no rival. 



^ . PREFACE. 

Modern civilization has been richly blessed 
in many ways, but its chief glory has always 
been the strength, patriotism and character of 
its young manhood. 

No class of individuals occupy such van- 
tage-ground in a nation as its young men. 
They must, of necessity, be an essential factor 
in all that counts for greatness and progress. 

It might be claimed that, to a certain extent, 
the- book herein presented champions the 
cause of young men. No apology is deemed 
necessary for this feature inasmuch as the 
author is himself no longer young. I believe 
that young men are men in the highest, full- 
est and best sense, and that they should be so 
considered. No personal or selfish interests 
have entered into the thoughts incorporated. 

There are two mistakes easily, and too 
often, made in writing for the young. One is 
to deal only with great men — famous states- 
men, generals, orators, heroes, scholars and 
financiers — and the gigantic and wonderful 
in history. The other is to scribble insipid 
yarns and twaddle. Both are apt to do harm. 
Those who read either are apt to miss their 



place in life — one by aiming beyond it, and 
the other by failing to aim at all. God has a 
•place in the world for every man — for the high 
and the low ; for the prominent and the ob- 
scure. To fill that particular place, no mat- 
ter whether it be the chief executive chair 
or a cobbler's bench, is the highest achieve- 
ment. To aid and encourage men to seek their 
divinely intended sphere in life, and cheer and 
inspire them to do their best therein is the 
highest possible mission of a book. 

It is not anticipated that this volume will 
escape criticism. Many, no doubt, will feel 
that too much is claimed for young men, that 
their sphere has been enlarged to an unwar- 
ranted scope. No innovations have been 
striven after. The book has been written 
under a firm conviction of its truth though, 
of course, not without a strong sense of its 
fallibility. 

A portion of what the volume contains has 
formed the basis of a number of addresses de- 
livered upon various occasions, chiefly to audi- 
ences of young men. These addresses were 
appreciated far beyond expectations and the 
numerous and pressing requests, from sources 
claiming my highest respect, that they be pub- 
lished have greatly encouraged me in sending 
forth the book. 

The book has been written in a somewhat 



xu 



fragmentary manner, here a little and there a 
little, and under a great variety of circum- 
stances. Consequently, to the critical reader, 
it will appear somewhat disconnected and 
desultory. A large number of books, more or 
less related to the subjects in hand, have been 
read and studied and to their authors, too num- 
erous to name, I cheerfully acknowledge my 
indebtedness. Extensive quoting has, how- 
ever, been avoided and, as a rule, limited to 
the preludes to each chapter and an occasional 
verse, couplet or short extract emphasizing the 
thought to be conveyed. The volume is es- 
sentially a new book. It is the result of an ex- 
tended and close study among young men. 
The world as it is, and not the thoughts writ- 
ten in books, has been my school. The chief 
aim has been to help young men to think in 
the right direction and inspire them with cour- 
age to walk and act accordingly. If there is 
a lack of charity at any point my pen has 
proven unfaithful to my desire. 

It is a grave responsibility to send forth a 
book to be read and discussed by young men. 
The issues of life often originate over the 
printed page. Thousands owe their success 
and perhaps a greater number owe their ruin 
to books. Franklin said of a small volume, 
read when a youth: ^Tf I have been a useful 



citizen the public owes the advantages of it to 
that Httle book." 

One of the chapters of this volume was 
loaned to a family and read by one whose for- 
tunes are yet to be made. He read it intently 
and when he had finished he stood up and 
with a countenance seriously set, and with a 
determined emphasis exclaimed: ''I will be 
somebody ; I am determined to be of some ac- 
count in the world.'' May it so influence and 
inspire all who read its pages. 

Every morning in the year, within our- na- 
tion, more than fifteen hundred boys get out of 
bed and romp, play, sing, serve at home, 
study at school and make hilarious and glad 
city, hamlet and farm. When the shades of 
night settle deep over hill and valley, weary, 
innocent and hopeful of the morrow, they re- 
tire. They sleep and dream, view fair and en- 
chanting visions and live in floating castles. 
At dawn they awake from their slumbers, 
arise, and, in the light of a new day, go forth, 
not boys or children any longer, but men — 
divinely endowed men — to begin anew the 
things of life— to put away childish things — 
to begin at the foot of the hill and aspire to its 
summit, to learn lessons of patience, industry, 
self-denial and endurance. 

They go out from home into the world to 
meet and mingle with fifteen hundred other 



men one day older than themselves, and with 
others still older, thus forming a mighty legion 
— ^thirteen million in number — all of them 
young, yet men; all of them men, yet young. 
Together they plod and labor and press up- 
ward and on ; some in high and some in hum- 
ble paths; they build homes, they woo and 
wed and establish firesides ; they sow and reap, 
endow the race with power and clothe the 
earth in beauty. Some wax strong and grow 
in fame ; some struggle in weakness and want ; 
some rejoice in success and health ; some weep 
in sorrow and misfortune, and not a few fall 
by the wayside. 

But the period of young manhood is tran- 
sient. Time brings age and age claims all. 
With hands hardened by toil, with fortunes 
fixed by fate and with ranks broken by death, 
manhood's morning vanishes forever. 

Thus do young men come forth and act their 
part, and borne by the flight of time pass on 
into age, where, one by one, as the years roll 
by, like weary and footsore travellers, they 
enter the final rest. As in the sleep of another 
childhood let it be hoped, they will rest and 
slumber, and at the dawn of another day, and 
at the music of another clime, they will awake 
and, redeemed and glorified arise, and go forth 
rejoicing, clothed in youthful beauty, like unto 
heaven, and as lasting as the sunshine of the 
eternal morning. J. A. C. 

XV 



CHAPTER I 
Thirteen Million Strong 



Let no man despise thy youth. 

Paui 

"Not in life's ebbing twilight, 

Nor during its noontide glow; 
The best of life is manhood's mornings 
They reap rich harvests who wisely sow/' 

"Among the works of man, which human life is 
rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the 
first in importance surely is man himself/' 

What a piece of work is man ! How noble in rea- 
son ! how infinite in fatuity, in form, in moving how 
express and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! 
in apprehension how like a God ! the beauty of the 
world ! the paragon of animals. 

Shakespeare. 

Manhood in its fresh embodiment — ^liealthful, 
■strong, and majestic — and womanhood in its rosy 
morning — fragrant with sweet thoughts and hopes 
and radiant in its dewy beauty — attract the love and 
admiration of all. 

/. G. Holland. 

Yield your young heart up cheerfully to the battle 
of life. Calculate upon difficulty; but calculate also 
upon success ; only be sure you do it wisely. 

Daniel Wise. 



i8 



CHAPTER I. 

THIRTEEN MILLION STRONG. 

THE Science of Man is the most diffi- 
cult branch of knowledge to learn, 
yet of all the subjects we are called 
upon to investigate and study, it is 
the most interesting and important. The sub- 
ject is so complex and comprehensive that he 
who undertakes to master it is apt to become 
bewildered by what he sees existing beyond the 
extrerne limits of his greatest research. Al- 
though the subject is beyond complete com- 
prehension, the fact remains that 'The proper 
study of mankind is man.'' 

There never was a time perhaps, in the 
whole history of the human race, when the 
lives of men were singled out individually and 
made subjects for study as now. Let a man 
acquire great wealth, become eminent in any 
profession or calling, or achieve greatness or 
fame among his fellow men, and he at once 
becomes a closely studied object lesson for the 
rest of the world. The methods of such a man 
become mottoes and his utterances become 



19 



Manhood's Morning. 

maxims of accepted wisdom to direct and in- 
spire others in climbing the difficult but royal 
road to fame and fortune. Indeed, the secret 
of success is the modern oracle, and he who 
by wisdom, wit, or genius, unfolds it in his life, 
secures for his name the homage and admira- 
tion of the generations of earth. 

The subject of this book is man. The 
treatment of so broad a topic however, must 
of necessity be only partial and cannot be con- 
sidered in its fullest sense. In the more mod- 
ern and improved methods of study, when a 
subject is to be considered, it is divided and 
subdivided into various parts and appropri- 
ately classified in order to gain specific and 
definite knowledge, and fix the knowledge 
thus gained in the mind. In this manner the 
astronomer divides the stars into various sys- 
tems and constellations, and classifies them ac- 
cording to their behavior in the heavens ; the 
botanist divides plants into various orders or 
groups and classifies them still further accord- 
ing to special characteristics, in order to make 
their study both tangible and interesting. 

So in the study of man, it is essential to 
divide the subject into various classifications in 
order to bring clearly to mind special knowl- 
edge, and to learn special lessons therefrom. 
As occasion requires, we select for study the 
different kinds and types of men; the noble 

20 



Thirteen Million Strong. 

and the base, the learned and the ignorant, 
the patriotic and the anarchal, the rich and the 
poor, the native born and the foreign, the 
thrifty and the shiftless, the industrious and 
the indolent, the upright and the vicious, and 
from any of these classes we can learn lessons 
both interesting and profitable. 

In this book, devoted to the study of the sub- 
ject of MAN, but one distinction will be named, 
— that of age, — and the subject briefly and spe- 
cifically stated is 

THE YOUNG MEN OF OUR NATION. 

During the past few years a very great deal 
has been said and written about young men, 
and "we have been taught to look upon them 
as comprising a distinct and separate class of 
individuals. Indeed it is perfectly proper and 
natural that they be singled out as a distinct 
group, because in a pre-eminent degree, they 
possess characteristics not applicable to any 
other class of individuals. 

They compose a distinct and separate por- 
tion of our national greatness. The young 
men of America form a more exclusive and 
representative class than any other equal num- 
ber of individuals that could possibly be se- 
lected. 

That there is a period of life known as the 

21 



Manhood's Morning. 

age of ''Young Manhood'' none will deny. It 
is a period characterized by special traits of 
mind and character, and fraught with special 
endowments, opportunities, difficulties, temp- 
tations and duties. 

The questions arise^ — and they are important 
ones in this connection — ''What is a Young 
Man?''' ''When does a boy become a Young 
Man?'' and "When does a Young Man cease to 
be a Young Man?" "When does 'Young Man- 
hood' begin and when does it end?" "When is 
a man a man, and when is that man a young 
man?" "What are the peculiar features and 
characteristics of this age, and what are the 
special endowments and duties belonging to 
this period of life?" 

When the above questions are settled, the 
subject of young men deepens in interest and 
broadens in significance. Their sphere among 
men and the relation they hold towards busi- 
ness and social affairs, towards education, 
religion and politics and the enterprise and ac- 
tivities of life in general, become subjects for 
discussion and settlement. 

As a rule, a boy begins to be transformed 
into a Young Man at about the age of fourteen 
years. Occasionally the transformation begins 
earlier, but much more often somewhat later. 
Physiologists and medical writers place it be- 
tween the twelfth and the eighteenth year, but 

22 



Thirteen Million Strong. 

in the vast majority of cases it begins, and for 
all practical purposes it may be considered as 
beginning, at the fourteenth birthday. 

At this period many well-marked changes 
take place, involving not only the physical but 
the intellectual and moral natures. These 
changes are the result of a natural develop- 
ment or growth, and they are so gradual that 
the evolution takes place in many instances 
quite unperceived. The voice changes from 
the thin piping tone to the full rich voice of 
manhood, the body grows more erect, the 
shoulders broaden and grow more nearly 
square ; the chest expands, the muscles increase 
in size, firmness and strength ; the hair on the 
hea«d becomes coarser, and the fine downy 
hairs which cover the body begin to grow 
longer and take on more color ; the hair on the 
face begins to show itself, first as a primitive 
mustache, usually of much more interest to the 
owner than to others, and finally a beard ap- 
pears upon the face ; the skin becomes coarser 
in texture, and thicker; the taste regarding 
dress and personal appearance becomes more 
pronounced, and thus gradually, but inevit- 
ably, the boy crosses the threshold of man- 
hood. He is no longer a boy. He now enjoys 
a mental enthusiasm and moral courage inex- 
perienced before. He becomes gallant and 
chivalrous. A new affinity draws him to the 

23 



Manhood's Morning. 

opposite sex. It becomes natural and pleas- 
urable to him to associate with and protect 
ladies; he becomes energetic, and averse to 
restraint, he begins to think for himself, and 
to feel that he is surrounded by a new envi- 
ronment, actuated by new impulses and subject 
to new laws. He becomes restless, is desirous 
of choosing an avocation, is inclined to render 
an equivalent for what he receives and seeks 
independence in thought, will-power and action, 
There comes to life few moments more joyful 
and triumphant than that in which the heart 
swells and youth exclaims, 

'Time on my brow hath set its seal ; 
I start to find myself a man." 

He is a new creature, and it is of the greatest 
importance to him to know and realize it. His 
parents may continue to call him a child, the 
people may call him a boy as formerly, the 
law may call him a minor or an infant, but 
God, who made him, through the magic and 
unerring voice of nature, has proclaimed him 
a man. 

At this period parents realize that a change 
has taken place in their boy, and that he has 
entered into a new life. They begin to loosen 
restraint and to expect on the part of their 
offspring a self-assertion and desire to be and 
to do something. Paternal love is rewarded 

24 



Thirteen Million Strong. 

with new joys or confronted with a deeper 
and more anxious care. It is just as natural 
and as much a sacred duty for parents to wel- 
come and recognize the advent of the man-Hfe 
in their sons as it was to anticipate and pre- 
pare for their coming at birth. 

The other extreme — the ending of the period 
of young manhood — is not so well marked, 
but it is none the less real. There are various 
characteristics peculiar to the period of young 
manhood only, which now disappear. These 
changes are not so closely looked for, nor are 
they so apparent as those which accompany 
the ushering in of manhood. They are conse- 
quently much less discussed. They are not 
hailed with the same amount of expectancy, 
because the eyes have ceased to look so hope- 
fully into the future. The milestone in life's 
pathway which carries into the past the period 
of young manhood, is unwelcomed, unex- 
pected, and as a rule unnoticed. It is marked 
by a partial cessation of certain pleasant hope- 
ful ideas regarding life, in the place of which 
supervenes a modified conservative spirit, ac- 
companied by an inclination to settle down and 
enjoy the comforts of home; poetry is turned 
into prose, romance is transformed into reality, 
fancy into fact and experiment into experi- 
ence; man begins to see his shadow, the joy 
and the sorrow, the sweet and the bitter of life 

25 



Manhood's Morning. 

have become accepted and inevitable verities, 
and whether man is conscious of it or not his 
fortunes become fixed by fate. 

At this age most men can truthfully say 

^'That year by year, and ray by ray 
Romance's sunlight dies away, 

And long before the hair is gray 
The heart is disenchanted." 

The question arises : — When does this trans- 
formation from the period of young manhood 
into that which follows take place? When 
may it be said that a man is no longer a 
*^ Young Man?" As a rule the change takes 
place between the ages of twenty-five and 
thirty years, and it comes to every one. For 
all practical purposes the time may be placed 
at twenty-eight years of age. Indeed in most 
instances it takes place not far from this time. 
The changes wrought at this period of life 
may not affect the happiness nor the general 
character of the individual at all. He may 
live on just as light-hearted and joyful as 
before ; his life may be filled with sunshine, 
and fortune may attend his every footstep, 
but at an unbidden hour in life, and, as a rule, 
not far from the age of twenty-eight, every 
man, no matter what his condition or experi- 
ence may be, leaves behind him certain definite 
characteristics, opportunities and duties and 

26 



Thirteen Million Strong. 

they are gone forever. The transition is real 
and such an individual is no longer a genuine 
young man. 

A definite period — a distinctive epoch of 
life — is embraced between these years. The 
Young Men of America, therefore may be con- 
sidered to be composed of all male individuals 
between the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight 
years. 

These fourteen years embrace just two links, 
of seven years each, in the chain of life — one 
link before reaching the prevailing legal age 
of twenty-one, and one link after the legal 
majority has been attained. 

According to the Census of 1900, the total 
population of the United States was 76,303,- 
387, and of this number 39,059,242 were males. 
Almost exactly one-third of this number or 
13,019,747 were young men between the ages 
of fourteen and twenty-eight. There are 
therefore at the present time in the United 
States 13,000,000 male children and boys 
under fourteen, 

13,000,000 YOUNG MEN 

between fourteen and twenty-eight and 13,- 
000,000 men beyond the period of young man- 
hood. 

This vast army of young men, taken as a 
whole, constitutes a distinct class of individu- 

27 



Manhood's Morning. 

als, in many respects resembling each other, 
and in various ways interested in each other to 
a remarkable degree. Their natural sympa- 
thies are more uniform and mutual, and their 
business interests and social relations are more 
closely allied than those of any other similar 
number of individuals that now live or perhaps 
ever did live. While they are scattered 
throughout the length and breadth of three 
and one-half million square miles of territory, 
their intercourse with each other is more free, 
their interests and aims are more of a unit, 
and they are more universally in touch, through 
a common sympathy, than is the case with the 
inhabitants of the most closely populated city. 
They are more easily influenced by each other, 
and each in turn is more directly responsible 
for the acts and welfare of his fellows, than 
can be said of any other class of individuals. 
During this period of life, friendship and good- 
will are purest and most sincere, personal mag- 
netism is at its height and the social and fra- 
ternal ties are now at their strongest. 

Says the eminent Lord Brougham : ''At this 
enviable age, everything has the lively interest 
of novelty and freshness ; attention is perpetu- 
ally sharpened by curiosity; and the memory 
is tenacious of the deep impressions it thus 
receives, to a degree unknown in after life.'' 

During these years, opportunity is at its 

28 



Thirteen Million Strong. 

flood, ambition, courage and hope heed naught 
but conquest and victory, care and anxiety are 
at the ebb; disappointment now is only disci- 
pHne, failures simply stepping stones to greater 
success, and at this time every loyal hearted 
and truly courageous ''Young American" 
should possess that kind of determination, 
valor, and zeal which shirks no duty, fears no 
obstacle, and knows no defeat. 

The thirteen million young men of America 
are a potent factor, not only in promoting na- 
tional advancement, but in shaping the world's 
history. They represent the greatest available 
power of concerted human force the w^orld can 
produce. Their patriotic loyalty, moral worth, 
and manly strength render our land absolutely 
invulnerable to any and every external foe. 

The latent force represented by these thir- 
teen million young men is quite beyond mental 
comprehension. Were they to form in line, 
marching ten abreast and twelve feet apart, they 
would form one unbroken column 2800 miles 
long. Were they to clasp hands they would 
form two unbroken lines, reaching from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific ocean. If each one built a 
house, of the average size, the buildings would 
line both sides of eight streets reaching across 
our continent. They represent sufficient labor 
to dig the iron ore from the mines, manufacture 
it into wire, lay the foundations, and construct 

29 



Manhood's Morning. 

and complete the great New York and Brooklyn 
Bridge in three hours. 

The great Chinese wall is the unrivalled won- 
der of the world's industry. It is 1259 miles 
long, 20 feet high, 25 feet thick, and contains 
20,000 towers 40 feet square at the base and 37 
feet high. It took hundreds of years to build 
it and it is the most stupendous structure 
erected by man. If laid down in the United 
States it would reach from Niagara Falls to 
Dallas, Texas, or from New Orleans to New 
York. It would wall our Atlantic seaboard 
from Nova Scotia to Florida ; yet with the aid 
of modern machinery, the Young Men of 
America represent enough force to dig the clay 
from the earth, manufacture the bricks and 
construct the wall complete in five days. If 
they would begin to save and place at interest 
one dollar per week and continue to do so until 
sixty years of age, they would thus accumulate 
a sum surpassing the entire wealth of every 
kind and nature, both personal and real, public 
and private, of the United States at the present 
time. 

For each one to be sick one day is equal to 
31,000 being sick an entire year. They repre- 
sent enough labor to go into the forests and 
hew the timbers, to go into the mines and dig 
the iron, and manufacture it into steel rails and 
spikes, and construct a railroad reaching from 

30 



Thirteen Million Strong. 

New York City to San Francisco between the 
rising and the setting of the sun. 

For each one to invest one hundred dollars, 
would capitalize thirteen thousand banks, each 
having a capital of one hundred thousand dol- 
lars. Two cents daily from each would send 
three hundred thousand young men to college. 
For each one to waste ten cents daily is equal 
to the destruction of three hundred and seventy- 
five thousand houses, costing twelve hundred 
dollars each, annually, or equal to reducing to 
ashes a town of five thousand inhabitants every 
day in the year. 

That these thirteen million young men repre- 
sent fully as much intellectually and morally as 
they^ do physically, is a fact too often over- 
looked. In every way they represent the domi- 
nating factor in our national make-up. 

Perhaps no class of individuals is so little 
understood as young men. Yet no class exhib- 
its qualities more natural and uniform. 

Those older in years, under the guise of lead- 
ership and philanthropy, have spent much time 
trying to solve the problem as to what to do 
with our young men. 

Young men have been looked upon as a care 
— as wards and dependents — in the realm of 
business activity and progressive civilization. 
The world is slow to learn, and when it is 
taught is quick to forget, that young men are 

31 



Manhood's Morning. 

strong in muscle, mind and character, and that 
they, more than any others, are capable of car- 
rying on the world's work. Another mistake 
made is, men in general and young men in par- 
ticular are belittled by a low estimate being 
made of their possibilities. Men are the high- 
est expression of the Infinite Mind, and the 
best kind of man is a young man. They may 
be limited in their abilities, as most men are, 
yet they are not on this account in any sense 
insignificant. Each man, however humble in 
position or limited in powers, is an essential 
part of an important whole. There are stars in 
the heavens which seem of little account, yet if 
one were to fall it would disturb the entire 
heavens. There are men, weak in influence, yet 
they belong in their several places and for them 
to forsake duty embarrasses society as a whole. 
''What is really needed," says Gladstone, ''is 
to light up the spirit that is within a young 
man" .... "There is in every young 
man the material for good work in the world ; 
in every one, not only in those who are brilliant, 
not only those who are quick, but in those who 
are solid, and even those who are dull or seem 
to be dull." 

"Arouse him then ; this is thy part ; 

Show him the claim ; point out the need. 
And nerve his arm and cheer his heart; 

Then stand aside, and say : 'God-speed.' '' 

32 



Thirteen Million Strong. 

The greatest duties, the most difficult to per- 
form — are small duties. The greatest achieve- 
ments are not those historic deeds of greatness 
which are held up for admiration, but the small 
acts that are performed by the millions. As the 
stones for Solomon's Temple were hewn and 
chiseled by men in obscurity, and were brought 
together and piled into the magnificent struct- 
ure without fault or blemish, sO' it is with the 
faithful toil and loyal lives of men to-day. The 
great army of America's common people, such 
as most young men are, is the force which hews 
and chisels the worthy deeds which, when taken 
together, make our history noble and our nation 
prosperous, 



33 



CHAPTER II 
The Best Years of Life 



Rejoice, O young man * * * and walk in the ways 
of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes. 

Solomon, 

*^Young man — go forth in thy strength. 

Strike out — God will lead the way; 
Why wait for the noontide sun? 

Morning is the best of day." 

It is with men as with plants; from the first fruits 
they bear we learn what may be expected in the fu- 
ture. Demophilus. 

**In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a 
bright manhood there is no such word as — fail." 

Up, then, with a heroic spirit, and gird yourself for 
mortal conflict with the great Apollyon who bestrides 
your pathway ! If he has subdued thousands, thou- 
sands have also subdued him. And you too may be 
his conqueror! 

Wise, 

Why wilt thou defer thy good purpose from day to 
day? Arise and begin in this very instant, and say, 
Now is the time for doing, now is the time for striv- 
ing, now is the fit time to amend myself. 

Thomas a' Kemp is. 

*'Ye whose cheeks are rosy bright, 

Whose hands are strong, whose hearts are clear, 
Waste not of hope the morning light ! 

Ah, fools; why stand ye idle here?" 



36 



CHAPTER II. 

THE BEST YEARS OF LIFE. 

THROUGHOUT all history the period 
of young manhood has been regard- 
ed as the most intensely vital part 
of life. Man possesses many natural 
and important characteristics at this time, which 
give him a superior nature, and which place 
him at his best. As a rule, all the higher attri- 
butes which add vigor, force and attractiveness 
to manhood are now more prominent than at 
any other age. These years — from fourteen to 
twenty-eight — may be justly singled out as the 
most important, eventful and useful years of 
man's earthly career. Writers upon the sub- 
ject have been inclined to place man's best years 
later in life. Such a theory however, will not 
stand the test of candid judgment and experi- 
ence. With extremely rare exceptions, a man 
is as much of a man, and of far more individual 
im.portance, at twenty years of age than he is at 
forty. The fact that a man has acquired suc- 
cess, social standing, or become the father of a 
family, does not prove that he has grown in in- 

37 



Manhood's Morning. 

dividual importance or worth. Just the opposite 
is the truth. Such a man at forty is not render- 
ing to society and to the community so great a 
service as when he was striving to win and 
merit what he has gained ; he is not so much a 
guardian and father to his children now as 
when the powers which gave them existence 
were within his vitals ; his accumulated wealth 
is not so much a part of his individual make-up 
now as it was when it was stored up in his 
muscle, will power and brain. The world can 
spare such a man now a thousand times better 
than it could when he stood the incarnation of 
all these possibilities, at the threshold of man- 
hood. 

In a supreme manner the young men of a 
nation are the trustees of posterity. The thir- 
teen million young men of America, in a more 
delicate and real sense, hold guardianship over 
the vast legion of men and women, yet un- 
born, than do the millions of fathers around 
whose knees prattle and play the children of our 
great and populous land. The young men hold 
posterity within their life powers, and are daily 
moulding the character, measuring the success 
and determining the moral and mental capacity 
of their future offspring. They, like magic 
artists, are shaping the forms and inspiring the 
countenances, adding graceful curves to the 
outline and brightness to the eyes, and mixing 

38 



The Best Years of Life. 

the identical colors that shall paint the cheeks 
of their posterity for generations to come. The 
fathers of the nation may do whatsoever they 
may choose and it matters little, but the young 
men who represent the transmitting influences 
which shall some day be transformed into men 
and women of a still more important and ex- 
ceptional age, cannot commit a good or evil 
deed, or even think a good or evil thought, 
without imparting an influence for good or 
evil as penetrating and as lasting as the forces 
of kinship and parenthood. 

During this epoch of life, not only are the 
latent forces more profoundly impressionable, 
but the vital and active powers of mind and will 
are more tense and vigorous. The muscle is 
more agile and elastic, the intellect more alert 
and clear, the comprehension more unbiased 
and concentrated, the impulses more unselfish, 
the motives more exalted, the will more invin- 
cible, the ambition more determined, the for- 
ensic powers more magnetic, and the friend- 
ships and affections more sincere. Take him all 
in all, man wields a greater influence over his 
own nature, over his associates and upon the 
world at large at this time than at any other 
period of life. 

''Scion of a mighty stock ! 
Hands of iron — hearts of oak — 

39 



Manhood's Morning. 



Craft and subtle treachery, 
Gallant youth ! are not for thee." 

According to authentic statistics these four- 
teen years from every standpoint, comprise al- 
most exactly the middle third of life. It has 
already been stated that of the 39,000,000 males 
of our nation the 13,000,000 young men occupy 
the central place. Again, at the age of twenty- 
one — the centre of this period — the population 
of the nation is divided almost exactly into two 
equal portions, as there are about the same 
number under twenty-one as there are over 
this age. Twenty-one years of age — the centre 
of this epoch — is also almost exactly the centre 
of the average duration of life of the male 
population of our nation at the present time. 
Young men between the ages of fourteen and 
twenty-eight therefore represent the central 
portion — the middle third — of our male popu- 
lation. They form the central pillar of the 
three great columns of life — the zenith between 
the rise and decline, between childhood and age 
— the central links in the chain — the keystone 
in the arch — ^the main stretch in the race. 

The fact that these years form the most use- 
ful and important epoch in life cannot be too 
strongly emphasized. Those under fourteen 
are in the embrace of childhood. They think 

40 



.'^ 



The Best Years of Life. 

and comprehend only as children do, and are 
concerned in childish things. They have not 
begun to live in the broadest and most sig- 
nificant sense. The life of toiling activity which 
awaits them is so far a hidden mystery. They 
are dependent upon others for food, clothing 
and shelter, and manhood will be to each of 
them the evolution of a new creature. Those 
who have passed beyond the age of twenty- 
eight are no longer young men. They have 
undergone a transformation. They have, al- 
most to a man, sealed their fate and either 
solved or ignored and placed beyond reach of 
solution the great problems of life. Their suc- 
cess has been established, or misfortune and 
fixed and settled conditions have become perma- 
nent obstacles to their progress and usefulness. 
Most men over twenty-eight are simply pas- 
sive and slavish followers of previously formed 
plans and habits and permanently wrought 
circumstances. The future to them is simply 
a continuation of the past, adding a few more 
chapters to a volume plotted and outlined to 
the final page, and the chief portion written. 

Those who have planned wisely and those 
who have planned foolishly, both find the wind 
and tide going their way, carrying the one 
to success and usefulness, the other to failure 
and despair. 

As years pass by the evil days draw nigh 

41 



Manhood's Morning. 

to most men, perhaps to all ; wholesome inter- 
ests and hopeful vigor wane, selfishness and 
conservative habits supervene, and the ideas 
and energies which once represented enterprise 
and progress, become fossilized and useless de- 
bris among the achievements of a new age. 

Into the fourteen years, during which men 
are young and vigorous, the Infinite Mind has 
irrevocably crowded nearly all of the great and 
important events of life. God would not have 
forced men to work out so many of life's prob- 
lems at this age without giving them extra pow- 
ers and capabilities for effort and accomplish- 
ment. The laws of the land consider a young 
man simply an infant until he is twenty-one, 
but nature has written a law more inexorable 
— that manhood's duties begin earlier and they 
cannot be safely delayed. Legions of young 
men are ruined while idling away their time 
waiting for a legal title to manhood. A thou- 
sand make the mistake of postponing their 
opportunity to begin, where one begins too 
soon. A timely beginning is imperative in the 
accomplishment of life's work. 

Unless young men early grasp their oppor- 
tunity and are always prepared to utilize the 
natural but rapidly passing evolution of life's 
events, they fail in their mission and forfeit 
their usefulness. 

Man, to a remarkable degree, is the architect 

42 



The Best Years of Life. 

of his own fortune, and during the early years 
of manhood come the best and almost always 
the only chances to plan and construct some 
of the most difficult portions of life's work. 
Man does not grow into greatness from some- 
thing insignificant, like the slow growth of 
an acorn into an overspreading oak — but he 
builds. He plans and constructs himself. He 
must lay the foundation — the most important 
part — first. He is given simply enough material 
to construct his fortune — with none to spare — 
and he is required to plan the whole structure 
and use the choicest materials at the very start. 
If he makes a mistake his loss is permanent. 
He must build first. Future operations are at 
best only additions to the original design. 

At the very beginning young men must, in 
order to achieve success, choose their occupa- 
tion — select their life work. The day has gone 
by when a trade or profession can be ''picked 
up'' and carried to its highest success ; and 
the time is rapidly passing when it is possible 
to attain even a moderate success unless that 
calling is chosen for which the individual is 
specially adapted. Mistakes in selecting a vo- 
cation are becoming more serious. The curse 
of our industrial and professional systems is 
misfits — ''round men in square holes, and 
square men in round holes." It is as great a sin 
to murder our talent as it is to bury it. "It is 

43 



Manhood's Morning. 

an incontrovertible truth, that no man ever 
made an ill figure who understood his own tal- 
ents, nor a good one who mistook them/' It is 
pitiful to see a man in the pulpit who should 
be digging ditches, but it is a sin for a good 
preacher to spend his life shoveling dirt. God 
made every man for a purpose, yet a great ma- 
jority of mankind upset the divine plan by 
thoughtlessly and carelessly drifting into some 
occupation for which they possess no talent or 
adaptation. To trifle as most young men do, 
over such an important matter, is a personal 
disgrace, and results in an enormous accumula- 
tion of industrial and business shipwrecks. To 
overlook natural adaptation in selecting a call- 
ing and to follow that for which one is not fit- 
ted is downright dishonesty and cowardice — 
it not only buries the talents, but turns work 
into toil and drudgery, and renders the life of 
the offender unnatural and artificial. They 
only are happy whose labor and talents har- 
monize. No one so demoralizes a trade, a pro- 
fession or a business as the awkward misfit 
therein striving to succeed. The imperative 
need of the times is a more masterly service, 
and no reform will invite the millennium more 
surely than for every man to study his natural 
ability and talent and wisely follow their lead- 
ings. Untrained hands and unguided talents 
are a nuisance to the republic. Pauperism and 

44 



The Best Years of Life. 

crime are the natural offspring of an idle, trade- 
less manhood. Jails and almshouses swarm 
with lapsed talent and skill. The modern tramp 
and the legion of failures along life's highway 
are simply examples of the man who kept his 
talent in a napkin. Tradeless men have no per- 
manent grasp upon industry; the world does 
not owe them a living and at best they are only 
industrial ballast. Neither education, wealth 
nor religion can atone for neglecting to master 
a craft or business whereby to become useful 
and self supporting. The chief reason why so 
many young men fail to master some trade or 
business and why so many who' do make the 
effort make a mistake in their choice, is be- 
cause they do not begin early enough. As a 
rule, unless it is begun before the age of twenty, 
it is either never done at all or done at more 
or less of a compromise of the highest possibili- 
ties. 

Choosing an occupation is no small matter. 
It requires that a young man honestly and in- 
telligently measure his own ability and fitness 
and act accordingly. 

It belongs to every young man to know, 
better than any one can tell him, what he would 
like to do and what suits him best. No rules 
can be written to guide him. The world's 
greatest successes have often defied the most 
plausible advice. There is an inward impell- 

45 



Manhood's Morning. 

ing force, a calling of God perhaps, to every 
noble ambition which tends to lead in the right 
direction, and, as a rule, every young man must 
decide for himself regarding his occupation. 

During these years young men must leave 
home. To leave the parental roof and go out 
into the world is the lot of most young men. 
The event with its accompanying experiences is 
entirely natural and should always lead to 
wholesome results. Garfield said: ''Nine times 
out of ten the best thing that can happen to a 
young man is to be thrown overboard and com- 
pelled to swim or sink for himself.'' The 
world is a great school and there are lessons 
which give power to the will, strength to the 
character and fibre and force to the individual 
which can be learned nowhere else. It is the 
time and the place in which God tempers the 
metal and tests the faith of manhood. The best 
education that can come to us is obtained in our 
early struggles to earn an honest living — the 
greater the struggles the more valuable and 
enduring the lessons. There is much wisdom 
in the words of Saxe : — 

*ln the struggle for power, or scramble for pelf, 
Let this be your motto, 'Rely on yourself,' 

For whether the prize be a ribbon or throne, 
The victor is he who can go it alone." 

Never does a young man so completely hold 
within his grasp his fortunes and destiny as 

46 



The Best Years of Life. 

when he first ventures alone upon the great bat- 
tlefield of life. As a rule the pivotal step which 
decides between success and failure is taken at 
this time. By being thrown upon their own re- 
sources young men develop self-confidence, 
industry and independence; they learn to as- 
sert their own rights and to love what is theirs 
because they earn it, they become broad-minded 
and self-respectful and acquire moral courage. 
The now famous painting, ''Breaking Ho^ne 
Ties'' by the lamented Thomas Hovenden, 
which won the First Prize at the Chicago 
World's Fair, represents an American boy leav- 
ing home to battle for himself. ^^More than a 
thousand boys like this one go out from their 
homes every day to make homes for themselves, 
to create new conditions, to acquire property, 
to marry well and establish other families, to 
become good citizens and valued members of 
new communities, to develop that estate of 
American manhood which is the strength of 
the strongest of nations.'' Art to such a man is 
a noble thing. ''He made his skill preach 
homely lessons, interpret the elemental virtues 
of humanity and minister to the upbuilding of 
domestic purity and national honor." 

"On many a lip an honored name is heard, 
In many a hall his genius wins the prize; 
A nation's heart is touched to tender joy, 
At the sweet vision, 'Breaking Home Ties.' '' 

47 



Manhood's Morning. 

During these years young men must estab- 
lish a home of their own. While it is allotted 
to most young men to leave the home of their 
birth, it is their duty to find another. Man is a 
domestic being and his highest happiness is en- 
shrined in the home ; indeed the stability of our 
nation is embodied in the home life of its peo- 
ple. Contentment seldom if ever permanently 
forsakes the fireside, and when a young man 
loses the love of domestic joy he forfeits the 
noblest traits of citizenship. If every man in 
America had a good home — where content- 
ment, comfort and felicity abide — we would 
need little law and none to enforce it. Millions 
of young men are without homes. They drift 
from place to place, from job to job, until, di- 
vorced from natural affections and settled mo- 
tives in life, they become a national peril rather 
than a tower of strength and protection. Rid 
of their nobler qualities, they roam around like 
vermin, consuming and destroying the most 
precious elements of our social and national 
greatness. Discouraged and robbed of their 
natural estate they are driven hither and thither, 
first by booms of industrial prosperity, then 
by waves of discontent. The panacea for na- 
tional discontent and business depression is not 
more money but more homes. Nothing can 
take the place of the family fireside, and to none 
is it so beneficial as to young men. They can- 

48 



The Best Years of Life. 

not begin too early to plan and build a place that 
shall be to them a home, where all the hallowed 
influences which add comfort, happiness, sta- 
bility and character to life, shall meet and 
abide. 

During this epoch of life young men must 
get married. It is the natural, divinely ap- 
pointed time for this important event. During 
these years a man is better qualified to fall in 
love and marry than at any other time. Af- 
fection is never so pure, social ties never so 
strong, and friendship never so sincere as now. 
The greatest bliss that falls from heaven blesses 
the man who brings genuine worth to meet its 
worthy equal at the marriage altar. The high- 
est conceptions of life recognize marriage as the 
unfolding of a divine plan. At no time does 
the guiding hand of our Heavenly Father come 
nearer than when man and woman, drawn to- 
gether by the wooing of natural adaptation and 
tender affection, pledge their joys and sorrows, 
and the twain are transformed into a hallowed 
unit. 

When a young man seeks a wife, he steps 
upon holy ground and must press his claims 
alone. Friendship, be it ever so loyal, can never 
follow love. Cupid has a realm of his own; 
none but the elect inhabit his kingdom and he 
converses in a language which none others can 
understand. There are millions of young men 

4 49 



Manhood's Morning. 

in our land whose weal or woe will be sealed by 
the marriage vow. 

The progress, the happiness, the health and 
the destiny of the world depend upon wise mar- 
riages. Solomon said : ''Every wise woman 
buildeth her house,'' and the man who is wise 
marries her and lives in it and his life is a tri- 
umphant song of peace, joy and contentment. 

A good woman with an unworthy husband is 
to be pitied; no less pitiable is a good man 
with an unworthy wife. The wife, more than 
the husband, is the maker or destroyer of not 
only the happiness but of the success of wedded 
life. Woman, more than man, is blessed with a 
iund of those endearing qualities which make 
life joyous and beautiful. It is a part of her 
mission to give to the home her felicitous in- 
fluence. It is the very thing man most needs. 

"A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command." 

Man is astonishingly influenced by these 
things ; far more than people imagine. Do- 
mestic happiness or the lack of it stamps his 
career with success or failure. If I am a judge, 
men are more impressionable than women, 
and more husbands than wives, on account of 
domestic infelicity become discouraged, and, 
stranded upon life's pathway, die broken-heart- 
ed. The man who marries a good wife does 

50 



The Best Years of Life. 

not have to strive half so hard to get to heaven 
as the man who marries a bad wife does to keep 
out of perdition. It is a common expression 
that "When a woman marries it is the last of 
her/' but it is often the beginning of the man, 
and upon nothing does natural prosperity 
and universal progress so surely depend as upon 
young men thoughtfully, and in proper sea- 
son, entering into and cultivating all the en- 
dearments of the marriage relation. 

He who fails to invoke Divine direction and 
approval and to follow the leadings of his own 
higher nature in the choice of a wife, deals a 
fatal blow to life's most sacred duty and blights 
forever the most fragrant flower that adorns 
its pathway. 

During these years the strategic opportuni- 
ties and experiences — The Crises — of life 
come and go. That ''there is a tide in the af- 
fairs of men which taken at its flood leads on to 
fortune,'' is a truth almost universally accepted. 
Golden opportunities, no doubt, come to all, 
but they come but once and usually before the 
time expected. Opportunity comes, it is said, 
in the form of youth, with blushing cheeks and 
flowing locks, but if it finds its host unprepared, 
or if it be not warmly welcomed it turns, and 
exhibiting a bald head, it hurries away. It 
comes in leisurely through the front door and 
if not recognized, in its hurry to leave, jumps 

SI 



Manhood's Morning. 

out at the window. Real good chances of suc- 
cess never stand and plead at anybody's door. 
That so many opportunities are allowed to pass 
by is not because they come at the wrong time, 
but because young men think that others will 
come at a more convenient season. 

To recognize opportunities requires the keen, 
active and helpful faculties of the young, rather 
than the conservative thoughtfulness and ex- 
perience of the elderly. 

Youthful ambition, with its hopefulness and 
earnest zeal, is of infinitely more service in 
embracing chances of success than accumulated 
knowledge gained by experience, be it taught 
by either past successes or failures. 

Not only must opportunities be quickly 
caught but preparations must be made for them 
beforehand. Indeed one of the great secrets 
of success is to be prepared always for a good 
opportunity. There is only one secret greater 
than this — the secret of making the opportunity 
itself. 

"To catch Dame Fortune's golden smile 
Assiduous wait upon her." 

The vicissitudes of these years are supremely 
vital and important and make or unmake suc- 
cess. Courage, sagacity, faith and decision of 
character are put to their severest tests. There 
are certain times during this epoch when ques- 
tions must be settled which aflfect the entire life, 

• 52 



The Best Years of Life. 

and when a mistake brings a bitterness for 
which there is no remedy. There occasionally 
comes to almost every young man a supreme 
hour — a crisis — when life's highway seems to 
divide, and a choice must be made that shall 
shape the destinies not only of time but of eter- 
nity. Fortunate is the young man, who, at such 
critical moments, can rise to the full stature of 
his manhood, choose the right, trust in God, 
win the victory and triumphantly go forward. 
One thing is usually common in the experiences 
of the rich and the poor, the happy and the mis- 
erable, the saved and the lost, and that is, the 
little circumstances back in the past which 
proved stumbling blocks to one and stepping 
stones to the other. Success and failure often 
turn upon very small pivots. There is noth- 
ing more insignificant in appearance than a 
golden opportunity, and thousands of young 
men amount to little because they fail to grasp 
their best chance. They waste the lucky day, 
sleep the golden hour, wince at the crucial mo- 
ment — the crisis passes by — and their highest 
possibilities are blighted and stranded forever. 
During this period it is the duty of young 
men to become Christians. Nearly all who be- 
come useful Christians do so in early life. A 
man is seldom converted after twenty-eight; 
not one in ten between thirty and forty ; not one 
in sixty between forty and fifty, and not one 

53 



Manhood's Morning. 

in three hundred between fifty and sixty. More 
than 75 per cent, of those who are Christians 
were converted before the age of twenty-one. 
The Spirit which inchnes the minds and hearts 
of men toward- God and a rehgious Hfe rap- 
idly decHnes in influence after the age of man- 
hood is reached. The old may be saved, but 
salvation is specially in behalf of the young. 
The Bible contains scarcely a direct promise to 
an aged and unconverted man, but it is full of 
promise to young men. To a remarkable de- 
gree it is a book about young men and for 
young men. Its kings, its prophets, its apostles 
and its heroes were chiefly young men. Jesus 
Christ was a young man. He experienced the 
vicissitudes and trials of life, and was tempted 
of the devil as young men only experience these 
things. He learned a trade, waxed strong in 
muscle and mind, won his own reputation 
among men; came in contact with the world, 
saw its iniquity and deception, its hypocrisy 
and treason in high places as young men see 
these things to-day. Through it all he lived a 
pure and blameless life. He had no experience 
w^ith age, but finished his work while the glow 
of youthful vigor was upon his cheeks. His 
life is pre-eminently a pattern for young men. 
Nowhere is Christian character so attractive 
and powerful as when exemplified in the lives 
of young men. To none does it prove so great 

54 



The Best Years of Life. 

a blessing, and to none does it give so potent an 
influence for usefulness. 

Men must establish their habits, morals and 
character during these years. The acts, the de- 
sires and motives of one day become the habits 
and principles of the next. The lessons of ex- 
perience are not only now being taught, but 
they must be met and profitably applied. Life's 
battles must be fought, temptations overcome, 
evils conquered, obstacles put aside and en- 
emies overthrown. 

Timothy Titcomb in his noted Letters to 
Young People J in the opening sentence to young 
men wrote as follows : 'T suppose that the first 
great lesson a young man should learn is that 
he knows nothing; and that the earlier and 
more thoroughly this lesson is learned, the bet- 
ter it will be for his peace of mind and success 
in life . . . that intrinsically he is of little 
value.'' A wiser man said ''The glory of young 
men is their strength," and ''To the young man 
knowledge and discretion.'' The first great 
lesson for a young man to learn, the first fact 
to realize, is, that he is of some importance ; 
that upon his wisdom, energy and faithfulness 
all else depends and that the world cannot get 
along without him. Prevailing opinions re- 
garding the value of young men need revising. 
Parents, teachers, leaders of the people, busi- 
ness men, statesmen and rulers need educating 

55 



Manhood's Morning. 

upon this question. Parents, society and phil- 
anthropy try to do the impossible in training 
young men. Parents can train their children 
and heaven blesses the effort with a promise, 
but if they put off this duty until their children 
are men, the effort becomes unseasonable and 
futile. Young men must train themselves. 
Young men must be trusted and encouraged 
more, and advised and fostered less. Young 
men are strong physically, morally and intel- 
lectually if they are well bred, and they can plan 
and direct and work out their own fortunes bet- 
ter than anybody else can do it for them. Let us 
learn that God has a plan and a purpose in the 
life of every young man and that just as little 
outside advice and help as possible is desired. 

Not only must young men decide the great 
questions of life but they must undergo the try- 
ing ordeals encountered during the early career 
of all undertakings. It requires more skill and 
energy to establish a business than it does to 
manipulate it later on, no matter how large it 
may become. The public puts young men on 
trial. Their workmanship, talents and integrity 
are weighed in the balance of popular inspec- 
tion. Their reputation must be formed. They 
must now decide whether they will, as did the 
youth in ''Excelsior,'' face life's difficulties 
and press on to victory, or drift with the tide 
and wind by following the crowd. 

S6 



The Best Years of Life. 

Each succeeding generation of young men 
finds the duties of Hfe more difficult to per- 
form than their fathers did. The world is con- 
stantly growing wiser and more tensely organ- 
ized, and each new generation of workers must 
be wiser, more expert and sagacious. Young 
men must not only be more accomplished than 
their fathers are, but more accomplished than 
their fathers ever were. I write this reverently 
but candidly. In a progressive age, like the 
present, every branch of human activity rap- 
idly improves, and the level to which men must 
aspire — or fail — is constantly being raised. 
The young man who mimics the methods of 
others, treads in the footsteps of his father, or 
*Vaits for the old gentleman's shoes,'' seldom 
succeeds. 

The work and progress of the world grow 
more confusing and dazzling. A revolution is 
constantly going on — a revolution which throws 
men out of work and takes bread out of the 
mouths of children ; that crushes the weak and 
destroys the thoughtless. Each succeeding 
generation of young men belongs to a new 
age, crowded with new conditions and subject , 
to new laws and modes of action. It is said 
that the wisdom of Plato was so advanced that 
it took twenty centuries for the world to absorb 
it. If a Plato lived at the present day the world 
would travel at his heels. Our most brilliant 

57 



Manhood's Morning. 

thinkers and inventors not only find the people 
with them, but most of them find it difficult to 
maintain priority in claiming the fruits of their 
genius. It is a fatal delusion for young men to 
conclude that the world owes them a living and 
that somehov/ in some way it will come to them 
without its equivalent in work which brings 
into action their brightest faculties and best en- 
ergies. 

During these years man is most capable of 
performing heroic deeds and overcoming ob- 
stacles. Faith and hope are strong and the 
courage invincible. He neither looks backward 
into the past nor into the future. He lives now, 
and life is a living, present reality. Sickness 
and death are least to be feared, duty and op- 
portunity have but one watchword and its key- 
note is now. The beauty and power of manly 
vigor are now enthroned. 

Young men wield a greater influence upon 
society, politics and religion during these years 
than do those older in years. Their personality 
is more forensic and their sympathies more 
spontaneous and enduring. Wealth, position 
and authority may wield a power more pro- 
found, but it is autocratic and lifeless, and re- 
ceives only slavish servitude. The leadership of 
young men, on the other hand, is inspiring and 
their dauntless courage and enthusiasm are an 
incentive to our best energies. Their advent 

58 



The Best Years of Life. 

brings new life into the channels of enterprise, 
and by their presence every phase of activity is 
filled with renewed confidence and vigor. 

The world needs to be taught that the term 
''young'' when applied to man is not intended 
to narrow and limit but to magnify and aug- 
ment his significance. The prefix ''young" is 
the insignia of beauty, strength and force. 
Young men are strong in body, mind and spirit. 
They represent, in the fullest measure, power 
of intellect, of will and of character. They im- 
personate natural and potent qualities, which 
experience cannot guide and which age will 
fail to improve. Added to their strength are 
enthusiasm, hope, purity and love, and when 
these attributes are properly developed and 
blended men become capable of the highest 
duties and noblest aspirations. Now is it pos- 
sible to 

"Wake the strong divinity of soul, 
That conquers chance and fate." 

Young men have been the chief actors — the 
impelling force — in the world's history. In 
their normal sphere they are the proteges of 
none, the protectors of all. To a remarkable 
degree it is true that young men have founded 
kingdoms, empires and republics, and formu- 
lated laws and systems of government. They 
have championed the world's reforms, fought 
its battles and turned its contests into victories. 

59 



Manhood's Morning. 

They have willingly poured out their blood 
in the world's conflicts and given their lives 
as a sacrifice upon the altars of justice, liberty 
and truth. They have, through discoveries and 
inventions, kept the wheels of progress busy 
and turned the world into a thriving mart of 
commerce. They have penetrated the hidden 
domains and opened up a pathway for human 
habitation. They have founded the world's 
religions, overthrown its superstitions and false 
teachings and carried the lamp of civilization 
into the dark corners of the globe and spread 
broadcast the truths of Christian enlighten- 
ment. 



60 



CHAPTER III 
What Some Young Men Have Done 



Neglect not the gift that is in thee. — Paul. 

''The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight, 

But they, while their companions slept. 
Were toiling upward in the night/' 

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born with 
a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employ- 
ment and happiness. — Emerson, 

Be what nature intended you for, and you will suc- 
ceed; be anything else and you will be ten thousand 
times worse than nothing. — Sidney Smith. 

*'Our ideals become a power upon us for the eleva- 
tion of our life." 

Don't flinch, flounder, fall nor fiddle, but grapple 
like a man. * * * ^ ^^^ ^^q ^ills it can go 
anywhere and do what he determines to do. — John 
Todd, D. D. 

To wish is of little account; to succeed you must 
earnestly desire; and this desire must shorten thy 
sleep. — Ovid. 

The longer I live, the more I am certain that the 
great difference between men — between the feeble and 
the powerful, the great and the insignificant — is 
energy J invincible determination, a purpose once fixed, 
and then, death or victory. 

Sir Foxwell Buxton. 

"For the grandest times are before us 

And the world is yet to see 
The noblest work of this old world 

In the men that are to be — " 



62 



CHAPTER III. 

WHAT SOME YOUNG MEN HAVE DONE. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON, whose 
name will always stand first in our 
nation's history, sat down and wrote 
out one hundred and ten maxims of 
civility and good behavior for his own personal 
use when a boy of thirteen. He was busily en- 
gaged in surveying the wilds of Virginia at 
eighteen, and was an adjutant-general with the 
rank of major at nineteen. He fired the first 
gun in the French and Indian War of 1754, 
and commanded a regiment against the French 
before he was twenty-two. 

La Fayette, the French general and patriot, 
was not yet twenty when he was appointed a 
major-general by the American Congress, and 
when he fought the battle of Monmouth, for 
which he received a national vote of thanks, 
he was only twenty-one. When he revisited 
and made a tour of the United States he was 
only twenty-seven. 

Alexander the Great spent his boyhood 
in diligently studying under the tutorage of 
Aristotle and other distinguished teachers. He 

63 



Manhood's Morning. 

won his first battle at eighteen and ascended 
the throne of Macedon as king at twenty. He 
was at the head of forty thousand well disci- 
plined troops, and defeated Darius at twenty- 
two. One year later he almost annihilated the 
Persian army numbering six hundred thou- 
sand men. 

Hannibal^ one of the greatest military com- 
manders of any age, swore an eterna;l hostility 
to Rome at nine years of age, and kept his vow 
with the strictest fidelity. He had become the 
commander-in-chief of the army at twenty-six, 
having displayed extraordinary military genius 
by winning several battles, and had completed 
the subjugation of Spain while in his twenties. 

Napoleon began the study of military tac- 
tics at ten ; was a sub-lieutenant at sixteen, and 
rapidly rose in military distinction. He was at 
the head of the army of Italy, and had defeated 
four of the armies of Austria at twenty-eight ; 
he was master of France and Europe while yet 
in his twenties. 

Charles V. was one of the most powerful 
rulers and warriors of Europe before he was 
twenty-five. He ascended the throne of Spain 
at sixteen and at once became the most power- 
ful ruler of Europe. At twenty he was 
crowned Emperor of Germany. 

Louis XIV. ascended the throne at five, de- 
clared himself of age at thirteen, and his court 

64 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

was the centre of art, literature and science 
before he was twenty-one. 

David Farragut, the noted American Ad- 
miral, entered the navy as a midshipman when 
only nine years of age, and was a lieutenant at 
twenty-one. 

Demosthenes and Cicero, the two greatest 
orators of ancient times, both dedicated their 
lives to oratory during childhood, and by inde- 
fatigable effort they both achieved a renown as 
immortal as human language while yet in their 
twenties. At twenty-five Demosthenes was the 
greatest orator of Greece, and Cicero at the 
same age was the greatest orator of Rome. 

Daniel Webster, the eminent American 
orator and statesman, was such a sickly child 
that it was not thought that he would live, yet 
as a boy he had within him the elements of 
greatness. One day when he was about ten 
years of age, while sitting with his father on a 
hay-cock under an elm tree on the old New 
Hampshire farm, his father said to him : ''Ex- 
ert yourself — improve your opportunities — and 
when I am gone, you will not need to go 
through the hardships which I have under- 
gone.'' The ten year old Daniel threw himself 
upon his father's breast, and as he sobbed 
aloud, he registered a vow, deep in his heart, 
that he would never idle away a moment that 
could be devoted to study. When he went to 

s 65 



Manhood's Morning. 

school he Vv^as so shy that it was impossible for 
him to speak pieces, yet by perseverance he 
conquered his timidity. He had read six books 
of Virgil, and entered Dartmouth College at 
fifteen. He delivered an oration on the Fourth 
of July to the people of Hanover when he was 
eighteen years of age, of which Henry C. 
Lodge, his biographer said : ''The enduring 
work which Mr. Webster did in the world, 
and his meaning and influence in American his- 
tory, are all summed up in that boyish speech at 
Hanover which preached love of country, the 
grandeur of American nationality, fidelity to the 
constitution as the bulwark of nationality, and 
the necessity and the nobility of the union of 
the States.'' He had won fame as a lawyer, 
statesman and orator while yet in his twenties, 
and his father lived to reap the reward of his 
paternal devotion. 

William Wilberforce, the English philan- 
thropist and champion of freedom, began his 
anti-slavery efforts before he was sixteen years 
of age, by writing an article for a paper of 
York, entitled. In condemnation of the odious 
traffic of human flesh. He was a member of 
Parliament before he was twenty-one. 

William E. Gladstone, the ''Grand Old 
Man'' of England, was a member of the House 
of Commons at twenty-three, and Lord of the 
Treasury at twenty-six, and it was during these 

66 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

early days as much as in later years that he 
immortalized his name as a financier, statesman 
and patriot. 

Thomas Jefferson was enjoying extraordi- 
nary success as a lawyer, and was a member of 
the Virginia House of Burgesses at twenty-six. 
He wrote the Declaration of Independence be- 
fore he was old enough to act as President of 
the new nation it was intended to represent. 

Alexander Hamilton, the eminent Ameri- 
can statesman, when eighteen years of age, and 
about the time Great Britain and the Colonies 
began to disagree, wrote a number of articles 
in favor of American liberty, which were so 
patriotic and profoundly logical that their au- 
thorship was attributed to John Jay, who was 
a prominent American statesman and ripe 
scholar at the time. Hamilton was General 
Washington's aid-de-camp and his most trust- 
ed and confidential adviser at the age of 
tw^enty. He served in the Revolutionary war 
as colonel, became one of the most eminent 
lawyers in the State of New York and was a 
member of the Continental Congress at twenty- 
five ; aided by James Madison, he took a chief 
part in drafting the Constitution of the United 
States while yet in his twenties. 

John Tyler, the tenth President of the 
United States, entered William and Mary 
College at twelve, and graduated at sev^u- 



Manhood's Morning. 

teen; was admitted tO' the bar at nineteen 
and immediately entered upon a large prac- 
tice. He became a member of the State Leg- 
islature at twenty-one and entered Congress at 
twenty-six. 

Augustus Caesar, one of the mighty men of 
Rome, delivered an oration when only twelve 
years of age. He received the toga virilis at 
sixteen, and his efforts are among the most 
brilliant that history records, and all before he 
was of legal age. 

William Pitt, the classical scholar and 
statesman, began to prepare himself for the 
British Parliament when nine years of age, 
and he was a member of that body at twenty- 
two. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer at 
twenty-three ; Lord of the Treasury and Prime 
Minister at twenty-four ; and at twenty-five he 
was practically the ruler of England and was 
acknowledged to be, at this time, the greatest 
master of the whole science of parliamentary 
government that ever lived. 

Lord Bacon, the philosopher and Chancellor 
of England, and one of the most profound 
scholars the world has ever produced, began to 
antagonize the philosophy of Aristotle when 
only fifteen years of age. During his boyhood, 
his genius and profound mental insight won 
universal attention. He was appointed Con- 
sul to the Queen at twenty-eight. 

68 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

Plato, the celebrated Greek philosopher, 
spent his boyhood in writing poetry, but threw 
his verses in the fire and dedicated his life to 
the study of philosophy at twenty. He rapidly 
became one of the most profound thinkers the 
world has produced. 

Sir Isaac Newton began early in life to 
make his discoveries. When seated in his gar- 
den at Woolsthorpe, he saw the fall of the ap- 
ple which resulted in the discovery of the laws 
of gravitation, and immortalized his name, he 
was only twenty-three. He had constructed, 
while yet in his teens, a clock that ran by water 
power ; a sun-dial which remained for over two 
centuries on the corner of the house in which 
he lived, and a wind grist-mill which was so 
perfect that it would grind wheat into flour. 

Benjamin Franklin, the philosopher and 
statesman, began to write for publication when 
a boy of fourteen. He was publisher and edi- 
tor of a newspaper, author of 'Toor Richard's 
Almanac'' and had founded the Philadelphia 
Public Library before he was twenty-six. 

D'Alembert, the distinguished French 
mathematician, published his first Treatise on 
Dynamics, which marked a new era in me- 
chanical philosophy, at twenty-five. 

Gauss, one of the world's greatest mathe- 
matical scholars, devoted his early life to his 
favorite study and at twenty-one, was at work 

69 



Manhood's Morning. 

upon the great arithmetic which was pubHshed 
tvv^o years later and which made him famous. 

Pascal, the eminent French philosopher, 
without the aid of books or a teacher, solved 
various geometrical problems upon the floor of 
his mother's kitchen with a piece of charcoal 
before he was eight years of age, and in this 
manner had become proficient in geometry at 
twelve. He invented a calculating machine, 
and established the theory of atmospheric pres- 
sure, and published a treatise upon the subject 
at twenty-five. 

Sir Humphrey Davy, the greatest chemist 
the world has produced, and the discoverer of 
many of the chemical elements, began the study 
of natural philosophy when a boy. He made 
his first experiments in chemistry at nineteen, 
and discovered the exhilarating effects of ni- 
trous oxide, ''Laughing Gas,'' at twenty-one. 
He was appointed Professor in the Royal In- 
stitution of London at twenty-two, and was the 
leading chemist of the age while yet a young 
man. He published his Essays on Heat and 
Light at twenty-one ; and, in the language of 
Dr. Paris, ''his youth, his natural eloquence, 
his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations 
and well conducted experiments, excited uni- 
versal attention and unbounded applause'' at 
the age of twenty-three. 

Michael Faraday, the distinguished Brit- 

70 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

ish physicist, was born the son of a poor black- 
smith, but devoted his Hfe to study. Hearing 
Sir Humphrey Davy deUver some lectures on 
chemistry, he turned his attention toward that 
science and was chemical assistant in the Royal 
Institute at twenty-two, and rapidly became one 
of the greatest experimental philosophers the 
world has ever produced. 

Galileo, who gave to the world so many 
valuable discoveries, and whose name was made 
immortal by the invention of the telescope, and 
who was imprisoned and lost his eyesight for 
saying that the earth revolved, spent his boy- 
hood in dihgent study and research. He was 
only eighteen years of age when he stood in the 
cathedral of Pisa and noticed how regularly the 
great hanging lamp swung to and fro, and by 
comparing it with the beat of his pulse he de- 
cided the accuracy in time of its movements, 
from which he became the inventor of the clock 
pendulum. 

Gay-Lussac, one of the most eminent physi- 
cists of modern times, began his investigations 
when a boy. He published his work on The 
Dilation of Gases and Vapors at twenty-three, 
and was chosen by the French Institute to test 
the magnetic force of the atmosphere, and made 
a balloon ascension of more than 23,000 feet, 
at twenty-six. 

Lord Henry Brougham, the British states- 

71 



Manhood's Morning. 

man, orator and scientist, was a brilliant schol- 
ar while yet in his teens. He published his 
Refraction and Reflection of Light at the age 
of seventeen, and was one of the founders of the 
Edinburgh Review at twenty-three. 

Linnaeus, one of the world's most noted 
naturalists, manifested a profound love for the 
study of botany when a boy. At twenty he 
was preparing a work on the Plants of the 
Bible and prosecuting the study of medicine. 
He was a successful teacher of botany and had 
published his botanical work, Hortns Uplandi- 
ciis, at twenty-four. 

Professor Agassiz, the eminent and greatly 
beloved naturalist and scientist, began his fa- 
vorite studies at eleven years of age, and pur- 
sued them diligently during the remainder of 
his life. He was recognized as one of the most 
profound scholars of the age while yet in his 
twenties. 

Humboldt, to whom physical science is more 
indebted than any man of modern times, began 
his studies while yet in his teens. He published 
his first volume at twenty-one, and was fa- 
mous while yet a young man. 

John J. Audubon, the world's greatest or- 
nithologist, began the study of birds when a 
youth. He was born in Louisiana but was 
studying painting in Paris, at the age of four- 
teen as a student of the celebrated painter, 
David. 

72 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

Henry Cavendish, the English naturalist 
and chemist founded the principles of pneu- 
matic chemistry, and discovered the element 
hydrogen while yet in his twenties. 

Sir William Rowan Hamilton, the emi- 
nent mathematician, had learned thirteen differ- 
ent languages at thirteen. He had thoroughly 
mastered all the branches of the ordinary uni- 
versity course and was making original investi- 
gations in mathematics, philosophy and meta- 
physics at fifteen. He was appointed to the 
chair of Astronomer Royal for Ireland at 
twenty-two. When he entered college as a stu- 
dent he presented an essay written in fourteen 
different languages, and during his course at 
college won every prize open to competition 
both in classics and in science. His discov- 
eries and investigations in mathematics and the 
sciences made him famous while yet in his 
twenties. 

Dr. Thomas Young, the English scientist, 
philosopher and scholar, began his brilliant ca- 
reer at a very early age. He was in the Staple- 
ton Boarding School at seven, and had acquired 
a remarkable knowledge of Greek, Latin and 
mathematics, had learned French and Latin 
without a teacher, and had made considerable 
progress in Arabic, Persic and Hebrew at four- 
teen. At this time a noted educator was em- 
ployed to instruct him, but Young proved to 

73 



Manhood's Morning. 

be more learned than his teacher. He had not 
only learned to speak and write various Orient- 
al and European languages with great ease and 
fluency, but had gained a profound knowledge 
of botany, zoology, chemistry, music, natural 
philosophy and higher mathematics, and was 
studying medicine while yet in his teens. It is 
said of him by Rev. W. H. Milburn, ''He may 
be styled, without exaggeration, the most 
learned, profound, and variously accomplished 
scholar and man of science that has appeared 
in our age, — perhaps in any age.'' Helmholtz, 
the eminent scholar and philosopher, said, ''I 
consider him the greatest man of science that 
has appeared in the history of this planet.'' 
* "^ * ''The greatest discovery I ever made 
was the genius and talent of Thomas Young." 
Professor Tyndall regarded him as immeasur- 
ably above any man that had lived since Sir 
Isaac Newton. While a student on his way to 
Gottingen University he visited Erasmus Dar- 
win, who said of him, "He unites the scholar 
with the philosopher, and the cultivation of 
modern arts with the simplicity of ancient man- 
ners." Although a statute prohibited the grant- 
ing of diplomas, except after six years' study, 
when he entered the College of Physicians, 
he was introduced by the head of the institu- 
tion. Dr. Farmer, as capable of occupying any 
professorship in the college — "a pupil capable 

74 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

of reading lectures to his preceptors/' At the 
same time he had profound knowledge of a 
great variety of languages and no less than 
fifteen of the most progressive sciences of the 
age. His knowledge of music was such that 
only one or two instruments existed that he 
could not play. He was an accomplished art- 
ist and one of the greatest art critics of his 
day. While yet in his twenties he was profes- 
sor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institu- 
tion, had published his Syllabus on Natural 
and Experimental Philosophy, Outlines of 
Light and Color ^ Outlines and Experiments 
Respecting Sound and Light, Experiments and 
Calculations Relative to Science of Physical 
Optics, and was delivering his remarkable lec- 
tures on mechanics, hydrostatics, hydrodynam- 
ics, acoustics and optics, astronomy, the theory 
of the tides, properties of matter, cohesion, elec- 
tricity, magnetism, the theory of heat and cli- 
matology, forming the most comprehensive 
system of natural philosophy ever published in 
England. Dr. Young was one of the deepest 
thinkers and most profound scholars the world 
has produced. His motto was : ''What others 
have done, I can do.'' 

McCoRMiCK had conceived in his own mind, 
and constructed with his own hands, a harvest- 
ing reaper before he was twenty-two. 

Elias Howe gave to the world one of its 

75 



Manhood's Morning. 

greatest civilizing agents, the sewing machine, 
when he was a young man of twenty-six. 

Eli Whitney, a Yankee school teacher, 
while yet in his twenties, invented the cotton- 
gin which doubled the wealth of the Southern 
States. Lord Macaulay said of Eli Whitney: 
''What Peter the Great did to make Russia 
dominant, Eli Whitney's invention of the cot- 
ton-gin has more than equalled in its relation 
to the power and progress of the United 
States." 

Dr. Thomas Morton gave to the world, at 
the age of twenty-six, what has proven to be 
one of the greatest blessings bestowed upon 
mankind — the discovery of the use of ether as 
an anaesthetic to relieve pain during surgical 
operations. 

Thomas A. Edison, the greatest living gen- 
ius, at the age of twenty-three, ''penniless, 
friendless and hungry'' made his first discovery 
in telegraphy, and in a very short time he was 
employing hundreds of men to construct the 
conceptions of his wonderful mind. The 
Commissioner of Patents styled him "the young 
man who keeps the path to the Patent Office 
hot with his footsteps." He was acknowledged 
to be a modern intellectual wonder while yet a 
young man. 

Robert Fulton, the inventor of steam nav- 
igation, constructed paddle-wheels to a fishing 

76 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

boat that turned with a crank, at fourteen. He 
was apprenticed to a jeweler when a boy, but 
by selHng pictures which he painted at odd 
hours he bought a farm for his mother and was 
in Europe studying art and earning his own 
way at twenty-one. 

John Ericsson, the distinguished engineer 
and inventor, had made numerous drawings 
and mechanical contrivances, showing remark- 
able inventive genius, before he was eleven 
years of age. Among other things he had con- 
structed a miniature saw-mill with his own 
hands and by his own plans. At eleven years 
of age he was appointed leveler at the grand 
Swedish canal then being constructed, and at 
fourteen he was appointed to set out a section, 
employing six hundred men. He invented a 
copper plate engraving machine at twenty, 
and a condensing flame engine at twenty-two. 
Tliese were followed by an instrument for sea 
sounding, a hydrostatic weighing machine, a 
number of improvements in tubular boilers, an 
artificial draft by centrifugal fan blowers, and 
a self-acting gun lock. His celebrated steam- 
carriage, which made thirty miles an hour and 
which contained four important features of the 
modern locomotive, was built by him when he 
was only twenty-six. 

George Stevenson, the inventor of the lo- 
comotive, began to apply himself diligently to 



Manhood's Morning. 

the study of steam engines when a boy of fif- 
teen, and the history of his early years is a rare 
record of the complete victory of patience and 
perseverance over poverty and embarrassments. 

Samuel Colt invented the revolver which 
bears his name, at twenty-one. 

James Watt, the Scotch mechanic, scientist 
and engineer, who, more than any one else de- 
serves the honor of inventing the steam engine, 
had become such an expert, that at twenty-one 
he was appointed mathematical instrument 
maker to the University of Glasgow. He had 
begun his investigations into the power and ca- 
pabilities of steam as a motive force before he 
was twenty-three, and at twenty-seven, he was 
working in earnest upon his wonderful im- 
provements of the steam engine. Watt was 
regarded by the poet Wordsworth as ''perhaps 
the most extraordinary man Scotland ever pro- 
duced." 

Samuel Compton, of Lancashire, England, 
to whom woman owes an everlasting debt of 
gratitude for inventing the spinning machine, 
began to sit up nights at the age of twenty-one 
to construct the machine that was already in his 
mind, and for years he labored upon it while 
others slept, and gave it to the world when he 
was twenty-six. 

Edward Gibbon, the English historian, and . 
in some respects, the most brilliant recorder of 

78 



, What Some Young Men Have Done. 

events the world has produced, began his 
studies, which resulted in his unrivaled his- 
torical works, at the age of seventeen, and his 
writings, exhibiting all the characteristics of a 
mature and profound scholar, began to be pub- 
lished when he was only twenty-four. 

MuLLER, the eminent Swiss historian, was 
Professor of Greek at twenty, and wrote his 
first work, Belhim Cimbricum, at this time. 
He delivered his celebrated lectures at twenty- 
six on Universal History, afterward published 
in twenty-four volumes. 

George Bancroft, the eminent American 
statesman and historian, entered Harvard Col- 
lege at thirteen, was made Doctor of Philoso- 
phy at the University of Gottingen at twenty, 
and three years later began to collect material 
for his wonderful masterpiece — Bancroffs His- 
tory of the United States. 

JoSEPHUS, the famous Jewish historian, was 
recognized as an authority upon the subject of 
Jewish law at the age of fourteen. He became 
a Pharisee at nineteen, and at twenty-six went 
to Rome and succeeded in obtaining the release 
of a number of prisoners who had been incar- 
cerated by Felix, the same that had ''trembled'' 
before the eloquence of the Apostle Paul. 

Neander, the celebrated ecclesiastical his- 
torian of Germany, was a profound student of 
theology at ten years of age, and was Professor 

79 



Manhood's Morning. 

Extraordinary in the Heidelberg University at 
twenty-three. 

Edward Everett, the American patriot, ora- 
tor and scholar, entered Harvard College at the 
age of thirteen; graduated with the highest 
honors at seventeen ; was Professor of the 
Greek Language and Literature in his Alma 
Mater, and one of the most eloquent and force- 
ful speakers in the United States at the age of 
twenty. 

Washington Irving, the American author 
and humorist, was a classical scholar and had 
traveled through many foreign countries and 
been admitted to the bar at twenty-three. He 
published Salmagundi at twenty- four, and his 
History of New York, by Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker, which proved to be one of the most 
popular books of the language, was published 
at the age of twenty-six. 

Victor Hugo, one of the leading poets and 
novelists of modern times, was busy with his 
pen while yet in his teens. He published his 
Odes and Ballads at twenty, and he became 
famous while young in years. He was the 
prime mover in the literary revolution before 
he was twenty-eight. 

John Ruskin, one of the literary lights of 
the nineteenth century, was a graduate of Ox- 
ford, had won the Newdigate prize by writing 
poetry, had begun his independent studies in 

80 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

theology and architecture, was a recognized au- 
thority on the latter subject, had traveled ex- 
tensively in England and on the Continent and 
had written his famous Modern Painters, at 
twenty-four. 

Elihu Burrett, the ''learned blacksmith," 
of New Britain, Connecticut, ''sat down night 
after night, with aching limbs and barnacled 
hands/' and, by patient application, mastered 
fifty different languages before he was twenty- 
seven. 

Bayard Taylor, the American traveler, poet 
and writer, was studying Latin, French and 
Spanish at fourteen ; was teaching at fifteen. 
At sixteen he wrote in his Diary : "I, a humble 
pedagogue, might by unremitted and arduous 
intellectual and moral exertion become a light, 
a star, among the names of my country. May 
it be !'' He began his public literary career at 
seventeen. His first book was published when 
he was nineteen. He was traveling through 
Europe on foot at twenty, published his Vitzvs 
'A-foot at twenty-one, and was editor of the 
New York Tribune at twenty-four. 

RuFUS Choate, America's greatest jurist, 
whose name will ever be the synonym of a 
"thorough patriot, an accomplished and pro- 
found scholar, and a gentleman of fascinating 
manners, of a most affectionate temper and of 
unsullied honor,'' had exhausted the town H- 



Manhood's Morning. 

brary of Essex, near where he Hved, at the age 
of ten. 

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, 
practically began his life's work when a boy of 
eleven, by his systematic study at the Charter- 
house School in London. At sixteen he was in 
Christ's Church College, Oxford, and soon be- 
came an exceptionally brilliant classical scholar. 
It was while at college that he and his brother, 
Charles Wesley, formed the Holy Club, the 
members of which, designated Methodists, 
proved to be the germ of one of the most pow- 
erful religious movements in the world's his- 
tory. He was a polished writer and a skillful 
and thoughtful logician at twenty-three, and 
was Professor of Greek at twenty-four. 

George Fox, the originator of the Society of 
Friends, known as ''Quakers," conceived the 
ideas upon which their religion is based at the 
age of twenty-two, and began to organize and 
proselytize at twenty-six. 

Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, spent 
his boyhood in diligent study and research, and 
married at nineteen. He was superintending 
public affairs at twenty. He began his theo- 
logical teachings, which have shaped the reHg- 
ious belief of nearly one-third of the human 
race for over twenty-three centuries, when he 
was a young man of twenty-two. 

Martin Luther, the leader of the Reforma- 

82 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

tion, spent his early years in diligent study, 
and was a Professor of Philosophy at twenty- 
five. When he ascended the Scala Santa in 
Rome on his knees and heard the inward voice, 
'The just shall live by faith/' 'he was only 
twenty-seven. 

Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther's 
fellow laborer in the Reformation, graduated 
from the University of Heidelberg at fifteen 
and from Tubingen at seventeen ; had publish- 
ed a grammar and was Professor of Greek at 
Wittenberg at twenty-one. He published the 
first great Protestant work on dogmatic the- 
ology at the age of twenty-four, and so popular 
did it become that it passed through fifty edi- 
tions during the author's lifetime. 

John Calvin, the founder of Presbyterian- 
ism, was appointed to a benefice in the Cathe- 
dral of his native town at twelve years of age, 
and was given a pastoral care at seventeen. He 
became deeply absorbed in the study of law, 
theology and the languages while in his teens, 
at the same time teaching and preaching. He 
began to teach the doctrines which form the 
basis of the Presbyterian belief early in his 
twenties ; his sermons were publicly burned at 
twenty-three, and he published his famous 
Institutes of the Christian Religion at twenty- 
seven. 

George Whitefield, the eminent preacher 

83 



Manhood's Morning. 

and founder of ''Calvinistic Methodism/' was 
a boot-black, but began to write sermons during 
his boyhood and at twenty-one was one of the 
most powerful and popular pulpit orators the 
world has produced. 

Jeremy Taylor, one of the greatest names 
in the English Church, was the son of a barber ; 
entered college at thirteen and at eighteen was 
preaching in St. Paul's Cathedral in London 
to large and spellbound audiences. 

DwiGHT L. Moody, at seventeen, when sleep- 
ing in the gallery of a Boston church, was 
punched in the ribs by an old gentleman and 
told to ^'listen to the sermon.'' He was thor- 
oughly awake and trying to preach at eighteen. 
He had become one of the most successful 
evangelists of the century while yet in his 
twenties. 

Charles H. Spurgeon, the famous pulpit 
orator, was preaching at sixteen. He rapidly 
won fame as the ''Boy Preacher" and he began 
to preach in the great London Tabernacle at 
twenty. 

Rev. F. E. Clark was yet in his twenties 
when he founded the Young People's Society 
of Christian Endeavor, which now encircles the 
globe and has over forty-two thousand societies 
and two and one-half million members. 

George Williams, the English dry goodts 

84 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

clerk, founded the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation at the age of twenty-three. 

William Cullen Bryant was translating 
Latin poems into English at ten years of age. 
He composed The Spanish Revolution and the 
Embargo at thirteen, and his celebrated Thana- 
topsis at eighteen. 

Alfred Tennyson, late poet laureate of 
Great Britain, published his first verses at 
eighteen. He won the Chancellor's medal at 
Cambridge University at twenty, and a volume 
of poems of his own composing was published 
during the same year. 

Robert Southey, the poet laureate of Eng- 
land, began to write verses when a mere boy 
and was famous at eighteen. He was poet, 
scholar, antiquary, critic and historian, and was 
a more prolific writer than Sir Walter Scott. 
He is said to have burned more verses before he 
was thirty than he published during his whole 
life. 

John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, com- 
posed that exquisite poem. Lines to a Fair In- 
fant, at seventeen, and his Hymn on the Na- 
'tivity, the grandest religious lyric poem in any 
language, at twenty-one. 

Dante, the illustrious Italian poet, claimed to 
have received his poetic inspiration at nine 
years of age. In early life he became versed in 
philosophy, theology and Latin, and skillful in 

85 



Manhood's Morning. 

painting, music and other arts; he composed 
his celebrated Vita Niiova at twenty-five. 

John Greenleaf Whittier worked on a 
farm and at shoemaking until he was eighteen, 
but by close application to study he became ed- 
itor of The American Manufacturer at twenty- 
two, and of the New England Review at 
twenty-three, and rapidly won distinction and 
affection. 

Longfellow entered Bowdoin College at 
fourteen, and at this time began his poetical 
career. He was appointed Professor of Mod- 
ern Languages and Literature at nineteen, and 
he was in the front rank of the great living 
poets at the age of twenty-six. 

Edgar Allan Poe published his first vol- 
nme of poems at twenty. 

James Montgomery, the Scottish poet, be- 
gan to write poems when he was ten years of 
age and had composed three volumes when he 
was only twelve. 

Alexander Petofi, the national poet of 
Hungary, at the age of twenty-one walked 
from his home to the city of Pesth, a distance 
of nearly two hundred miles, wearing shoes 
padded with straw, carrying the manuscript of 
a volume of poems in his bosom and two bor- 
rowed florins in his pocket. Within a few 
weeks he was surrounded by friends and for- 
tune, and his verses were in wonderful de- 

86 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

mand. During his lifetime he composed 1775 
poems, most of them being written while he 
was a young man. 

Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, began to 
write for the magazines at fourteen and com- 
posed his first volume of poems while yet in 
his teens. 

Joseph Addison, the poet and greatest of 
English essayists, distinguished himiself in 
Latin verse at sixteen and was receiving a pen- 
sion from the public treasury for his poetical 
productions at twenty-three. 

Robert Burns was a literary genius at 
twelve years of age, and a gifted poet at six- 
teen. 

Lord Byron published his first volume of 
poems while yet in his teens and was recog- 
nized as one of the most gifted and brilliant 
poets of the times and was a member of the 
House of Lords before he was twenty-five. 

Thomas Gray began his Elegy Written in a 
Country Church Yard, — considered by many 
as the most finished poem in the English lan- 
guage — at the age of twenty-six. 

Thomas Campbell, the eminent Scottish 
poet, was a distinguished classical scholar while 
yet in his teens and published The Pleasures of 
Hope, the best poem he ever wrote, at twenty- 
two. 

Junius Brutus Booth, the great American 

87 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

actor, was upon the stage when seventeen years 
old, and he was one of the most famous trage- 
dians of the times at twenty-one. 

Edwin Booth, who did more than any 
other man to raise the moral tone of modern 
dramatic art, went upon the stage when a mere 
boy and was playing Richard III, at sixteen. 

Sheridan, the Irish dramatist and orator, 
was pronounced a dunce when a boy at school 
by his teacher, and gave no evidence of talent, 
but he awoke from his mental stupidity and 
produced his famous comedy. The Rivals, at 
twenty-four, and his still more famous produc- 
tion. The School for Scandal, was performed in 
Drury Lane Theatre when he was only twenty- 
six. 

Beethoven, the great composer, whose in- 
fluence wrought a new epoch in music, created 
astonishment by his performance upon the vio- 
lin at eight years of age. He played the music 
in Bach's Wohltemperirtes Klavier at eleven, 
and published a volume of songs and sonatas 
of his own composing in his thirteenth year. 
His fame was world-wide while he was yet in 
his teens. 

Mozart, the immortal musician, played the 
clavi-chord at four years of age and composed 
a number of minuets and other pieces, still ex- 
tant. His talents were remarkably brilliant at 
seven, and he took part at sight in a trio of 

88 



Manhood's Morning. 

stringed instruments and gave concerts witH 
great success in London and Paris. His 
achievements and fame increased with remark- 
able rapidity, so that at the age of thirteen years 
the enthusiasm and honor given him were with- 
out a parallel in the world's history. 

Handel was composing a cantata in eight 
parts every week when he was only eight years 
of age and he produced his great opera, Al- 
mira, before he was twenty. Handel is con- 
sidered by many as the greatest composer the 
world has produced, and his fame was gained 
during his early life. 

Mendelssohn was both brilliant and famous 
at ten years of age, and had given public con- 
certs in Berlin and Paris. He began to com- 
pose music for the piano, violin and other in- 
struments at ten, and published a volume of his 
productions at fifteen. He composed his Mid- 
summer Nighfs Dream at eighteen and was 
the idol of all civilization while yet in his teens. 
He performed his famous oratorio, Paulus, at 
twenty-six. 

George Morgan, for many years organist 
at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, was a good pianist 
at five; he played the entire service in St. 
Nicholas' Church, Gloucester, England, at 
eight; performed in the Cathedral at twelve, 
and led the boys' choir in the same edifice from 
his fourteenth to his twentieth year. 

89 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

Weber, the celebrated composer, began to 
publish his famous operas at thirteen, and was 
conductor of the opera at Breslau, and had 
gained a great reputation for his talents at the 
age of eighteen. 

Rossini, the greatest lyrical composer of the 
present century, spent his boyhood studying 
the Italian and German masters. His Tancredi, 
which made such a wonderful sensation, ap- 
peared at twenty-three and his masterpiece, 
// Barhiere di Seviglia, was composed before he 
was twenty-six. 

Haydn, the noted German composer, was 
born in great poverty ; he became a member of 
the choir of St. Stephens, Vienna, at eight and 
was one of the leading musicians of his time 
while yet a young man. 

Theodore Thomas, the eminent American 
musician, began to play the violin in public at 
ten, and had won a wide reputation as a musi- 
cian and was leader of his orchestra, that has 
enjoyed such great popularity, at twenty-six. 

Rubinstein, the celebrated pianist, began to 
appear in public concerts at eight and from that 
time forward his career was attended by a 
constant ovation. 

Liszt, whose reputation as a pianist is un- 
excelled, began to play the piano when three 
years of age. He was a student of music at 
six ; he was starring through Russia with great 

90 



Manhood's Morning. 

success at sixteen, and was professor in the 
Strasburg Conservatory of music at twenty- 
three. 

GuSTAVE DoRE, the celebrated French artist, 
began to make sketches for the journals when 
a mere boy ; he showed remarkable ability while 
in his teens. He exhibited his painting, Bat- 
tle of Alma, when twenty- three, and quite a 
number of his masterpieces before he was 
twenty-six. 

Benjamin West, the famous American 
painter, began to paint pictures when six years 
of age. He was not encouraged in the art by 
his parents, but he made colors out of berries 
and leaves, and brushes out of a cat's tail ; and 
with this crude outfit attracted great attention 
by his skill. He painted a water-color picture 
at nine, which he claimed in after life, that in 
some respects, he never excelled. When his 
great painting, Christ Healing the Sick, was 
exhibited in the Royal Academy in London, this 
little picture was hung beside it. In his six- 
teenth year he painted one of his masterpieces. 
Death of Socrates. 

MiLLAis, the notable English painter, gained 
the first prize at the Society of Arts when only 
nine, and won the principal prizes at the Royal 
Academy when only eleven. He had completed 
his celebrated paintings. The Widow's Mite 

91 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

and the Tribe of Benjamin Seising the Daugh- 
ters of Shiloh, before he was eighteen. 

Michael Angelo, one of the greatest paint- 
ers, sculptors and architects that the world has 
produced, began to show remarkable skill at an 
early age, and his paintings while yet a young 
man brought forth a new era in the art. He 
carved his celebrated colossal statue of David 
at twenty-two. 

Raphael, the illustrious Italian artist, was 
an accomplished painter at fifteen and com- 
pleted his famous painting, The Espousals, at 
twenty. He entered the Vatican at twenty-five, 
where some of his frescoes and other paintings 
remain as monuments to his remarkable genius. 

Bernini, the famous Italian sculptor, paint- 
er and architect, began early to use the chisel ; 
he had completed his much admired group, 
Apollo and Daphne, and gained renown at 
eighteen. 

David Livingstone, the famous African ex- 
plorer and medical missionary, was born poor 
and placed in a cotton factory to learn spinning 
at ten. He bought Ruddiman's Rudiments of 
Latin with his first week's wages, and sat up 
nights until midnight and later to study, and 
thus acquired a knowledge of several lan- 
guages, botany and theology, and graduated in 
medicine, and was exploring the ''Dark Conti- 
nent'' at twenty-three. 

92 



Manhood's Morning. 

Henry M. Stanley was a teacher in arr 
almshouse at thirteen, and had crossed the 
ocean as a sailor at fifteen. He had fought on 
both sides in the Civil War, traveled over a 
large portion of the globe, was a famous new^s- 
paper correspondent and was on his way to Af- 
rica to find Livingstone w^hile yet in his twen- 
ties. 

~ Lord Macaulay acquired a brilliant reputa- 
tion as a scholar and debater, and had won va- 
rious prizes with his pen while in his teens. 
He early began to publish his writings, and his 
famous essay on Milton, ''the learning, elo- 
quence, patriotism, brilliancy of fancy, and gen- 
erous enthusiasm'' of which surprised and fas- 
cinated the public, appeared at twenty-five. 

Lord Lytton published his first work, Falk- 
land, at twenty-two and he was famous while 
yet in his twenties. 

Benjamin Disraeli, the British author and 
statesman, began to write for the press when a 
youth and gave to the world his first novel,, 
Vivian Grey, at twenty-two. 

Charles Dickens began to write fon pub- 
lication at a very early age. His Sketches by 
Boz appeared when he was twenty-four and 
his Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist while 
he was yet in his twenties. 

William Lloyd Garrison began to write 
articles for the press at seventeen and was edit- 

93 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

ing the Herald at nineteen. It was the strug- 
gles of these boyhood days of Garrison to 
which Lowell alluded when he said : — 

"In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, 
Toiled o'er his types one poor unlearned young man; 

The place was dark, ungarnitured and mean; — 
Yet there the freedom of a race began." 

He was in jail for writing anti-slavery ar- 
ticles at twenty-five and was the victim of a 
mob in the streets of Boston for the same of- 
fence while yet in his twenties. 

Wendell Phillips, the eminent statesman 
and orator, dedicated his life to the cause of 
justice and truth in his childhood. Referring 
to the matter just before he died, he said to a 
friend : ''When I was a boy fourteen years of 
age I heard Dr. Lyman Beecher preach on the 
theme, 'You belong to God.' I went home, 
threw myself upon the floor in my room, with 
locked doors, and prayed, 'O God, I belong to 
Thee; take what is Thine own.' From that 
day to this it has been so. Whenever I have 
known a thing to be wrong, it has held no temp- 
tation. Whenever I have known a thing to be 
right, it has taken no courage to do it." Mr. 
Phillips was only twenty-six on that memor- 
able occasion when he, amidst the intense ex- 
citement and threatening mob in Faneuil Hall, 
climbed upon the platform, and in answer to 

94 



Manhood's Morning. 

the unpatriotic and despotic speech of James 
Tricothic Austin, Attorney-General of Massa- 
chusetts, said, '' ^ ^ ^ Sir, when I heard 
the gentleman lay down principles which place 
the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis 
and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I 
thought those pictured lips (pointing to the 
portraits in the hall) would have broken into 
voice to rebuke the recreant American — the 
slanderer of the dead! ^ ^ ^ For senti- 
ments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by 
the prayers of the Puritans and the blood of 
patriots, the earth should have yawned and 
swallowed him up/' 

Theodore Parker, the eminent theologian 
and scholar, was teaching school at seventeen, 
and a few years later he was supporting himself 
in Harvard College by teaching private classes 
and schools, and applying his spare moments to 
the study of metaphysics, theology, Anglo- 
Saxon, Syriac, Arabic, Danish, Swedish, Ger- 
man, French, Spanish and modern Greek. He 
was one of the leading thinkers of the nation 
and editor of the Scriptural Interpreter at 
twenty-six. 

Jonathan Pereira, one of the most learned 
pharmacologists of any age, began his life- 
work when a boy and published a translation of 
the London Pharmacopceia at twenty. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson, the scholar, critic, 

95 



iWhat Some Young Men Have Done. 

poet and lexicographer, was born in poverty 
and was frail in body, but kept a diary from his 
early childhood and in October, 1719, when he 
was ten years of age, he wrote in it the follow- 
ing ; ''Desk tixe valedixi; sirenis isthis cantibus 
surdam posthac auvem obversurus/' — I have 

BIDDEN FAREWELL TO SLOTH AND INTEND 
HENCEFORTH TO TURN A DEAF EAR TO THE 

STRAINS OF THAT SIREN. He was in the full 
tide of his literary career while in his twenties. 

John Tyndall, the eminent scientist, chem- 
ist and scholar, was employed in a surveyor's 
office during his early boyhood. One day a fel- 
low workman noticing his ability to learn ad- 
vised him to devote his spare hours to study. 
The next morning John Tyndall, then not over 
twelve years of age, was out of bed and at his 
books before five o'clock, and for twelve years 
afterward he never swerved from the practice. 

Goethe, the illustrious German author, could 
write in Greek, Latin, French and other lan- 
guages at nine. He composed his poem, Jos- 
eph and His Brethren, at twelve. His pub- 
lished writings began to appear while he was 
yet in his teens. His romance. Sorrows of 
Young Werther, was published before its au- 
thor was twenty-five. It has been said of this 
work, ^'Perhaps there never was a fiction which 
so startled and enraptured the world; in Ger- 
many it became a people's book hawked about 

96 



Manhood's Morning. 

the streets ; it was the companion of Napoleon 
in Egypt, and in the Chinese Empire Char- 
lotte and Werther were modelled in porcelain/' 

John Jacob Astor, the famous millionaire, 
was born in Germany but had emigrated and 
was in business in New York at nineteen. He 
had accumulated two hundred thousand dol- 
lars, an immense fortune in those days, at 
twenty-six. 

Commodore Vanderbilt was born poor but 
had established a ferry across the East River 
at seventeen, and at twenty-three had saved 
nine thousand dollars, a large sum at that time. 

Jay Gould was keeping books for a black- 
smith at night to pay his way at school during 
the day, at fourteen ; at fifteen he was working 
from six A. M. till ten P. M. in a store, and 
rising at three o'clock in the morning and 
studying surveying and mathematics for the 
three hours before business hours. He was 
surveyor and author before he was twenty- 
one ; a tanner, a large lumber dealer, business 
man and capitalist before he was twenty-five. 

Stephen Girard was a sailor, sea captain 
and successful merchant before he was twenty- 
six. 

P. T. Barnum, the celebrated showman, was 
clerking at thirteen ; was in business at eigh- 
teen, editor of the Herald of Freedom at nine- 
teen, and was making fifteen hundred dollars 

7 97 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

per week exhibiting Joyce Heth, nurse of Gen- 
eral Washington, the ''greatest show on earth," 
when he was twenty-four. 

Horace Greeley, the founder of the New 
York Tribune, could read anything at four; 
had read the Bible through and could spell any 
word in the English language at six. He de- 
cided at eleven to be a printer and apprenticed 
himself at fourteen ; was a publisher at twenty- 
two, and although his uncouth manner and ug- 
liness were a great hindrance to his progress, 
he was famous as a literary genius while yet 
in his twenties. 

Henry Watterson, the noted writer and 
newspaper, editor, had learned the printing 
business and was an editor at eighteen, and was 
one of the famous newspaper men of America 
at twenty-eight. 

George W. Childs, the eminent American 
philanthropist, left home to seek his fortune 
and was in the United States navy at thirteen. 
He was born poor but he was rich in industry 
and perseverance, and was clerking in a Phila- 
delphia book store for two and a half dollars a 
week and saving part of his income at four- 
teen. He displayed a remarkable aptitude for 
business and liberality even as a child, and had 
accumulated a fortune at twenty-five. 

Solomon, ''the wisest ruler that ever lived 
or ever will live," ascended the throne at eigh- 

98 



Manhood's Morning. 

teen. *The wisdom of God was in him to do 
judgment/' and he began to build his great tem- 
ple at twenty, and it was finished while he was 
yet in his twenties. Of the nineteen kings that 
followed the reign of Solomon the ages of sev- 
enteen, at the time they ascended the throne, 
are given. Of seventeen, sixteen were young 
men. 

David, the king, psalmist and sweet singer 
of Israel, had seven brothers older than him- 
self, yet he was chosen in preference to them all 
to sit upon the throne. When he stood up to be 
anointed, he was a mere youth, ^'ruddy and 
withal of a beautiful countenance and goodly to 
look to." Although called from the tending 
of sheep to the throne of Israel at the age of 
twenty — too young to be president, senator, 
congressman, legislator, or even to vote in 
America — his reign furnishes the most brilliant 
example of elevated character in a ruler that 
the world has produced. 

Saul, the first king of Israel, and God's own 
anointed, was selected because he was a power- 
ful and choice young man, and when he was 
seated upon the throne, from hearts that '^God 
had touched'' went forth the prayer, ''God save 
the king" for the first time in human history. 

Moses, the lawgiver and sacred historian, 
was "exceeding fair" at a very early age and 
was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians 

99 

L.ofC. 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

and was mighty in words and in deeds while 
yet a young man. 

Joseph was sold by his brethren to the Ish- 
maelites for twenty pieces of silver at seven- 
teen. In the house of the Pharaohs he rapidly 
grew in wisdom and influence, and was ''ruler 
over all the land'' and Grand Vizier of Egypt 
while yet in his twenties. 

Samuel, the prophet and judge, was clothed 
with an ephod and a mantle and served in the 
temple when a mere boy. When he stood be- 
fore Eli, the High Priest, and foretold the doom 
that was to come upon him and his sons, he was 
only twenty. ''AH Israel, from Dan even to 
Beer-sheba, knew that Samuel was established 
to be a prophet,'' while he was yet a mere 
youth. 

Daniel, the prophet and courageous court 
minister of Babylon, began his life's work 
while a mere boy. By prudent conduct, per- 
sonal honor and wisdom, he was made "ruler 
of the whole province of Babylon," and chief 
of the Governors over all the wise men of 
Babylon while yet a young man. When "he 
purposed in his heart that he would not defile 
himself with the portion of the king's meat, 
nor with the wine which he drank" he was 
only a child. 

Samson, the judge and deliverer of Israel, 
showed his great physical strength and wisdom 

lOO 



Manhood's Morning. 

in his boyh(X)d. At twenty he killed the lion *'as 
though it were a kid/' and with the jaw- 
bone of an ass, he put forth his hand and slew 
a thousand men therewith, when he was twenty- 
one. 

JosiAH was appointed king of Judah at eight 
years of age. He began to seek the Lord at six- 
teen, and was actively engaged in purging the 
nation of idolatry at twenty. 

Jeremiah, the great prophet, began his sa- 
cred mission when a small boy. His plea for 
keeping silent was, ''Ah, Lord God! behold I 
cannot speak, for I am a child." But the Lord 
put forth His hand and touched his mouth and 
he was a great prophet, "a defenced city and an 
iron pillar and brazen walls against the whole 
land," before he was ten years of age. 

Elisha was young in years when he be- 
came the prophet of Israel. He was plough- 
ing in the field near the road leading from Da- 
mascus to Horeb when the mantle of Elijah 
was placed upon his shoulders, and leaving his 
plow and kissing his father and mother fare- 
well, he at once began his great work. 

Saul of Tarsus learned the trade of tent- 
making while a mere lad and, at thirteen, went 
to Jerusalem to prosecute his studies in the 
learning of the Jews and to study law under 
the great teacher, Gamaliel. It was to this 
period of his life, no doubt, that he referred 

lOI 



What Some Young Men Have Done. 

when he said, ''When I was a child I spake as 
a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a 
child, but when I became a man, I put away 
childish things." He was a faithful and zeal- 
ous Pharisee, and while young in years dis- 
tinguished himself as an able champion of his 
faith. He was converted and was a leader in 
Christian precepts and preaching while yet in 
his twenties. 

Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, the 
three Hebrews who were cast into the fiery fur- 
nace because they would not fall down and 
worship the golden image which Nebuchadnez- 
zar had set up in the Plains of Dura, were 
young men. With Daniel, they were '/children 
in whom was no blemish, skillful in all wis- 
dom and cunning in knowledge, and under- 
standing science.'' 

John the Baptist, as a child, grew and 
waxed strong and spent his boyhood in retire- 
ment, and when he began to preach in the wil- 
derness he was a young man. 

John, the beloved disciple, was only twenty 
years old when called as an apostle. 

Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, 
was about His Father's business at twelve. He 
"waxed strong in spirit and was filled with 
wisdom" while yet a child, and sat in the tem- 
ple in the midst of the doctors both hearing 
them and asking them questions, astonishing 

1 02 



Manhood's Morning. 

all by His questions and answers. He increased 
in wisdom and stature and in favor with God 
and man, and performed and finished His mis- 
sion while yet young in years and in His phys- 
ical prime. During His life He constantly com- 
plimented and honored youth. His disciples 
were perhaps all young men. His miracles 
and parables show a special devotion to young 
people. When He fed the five thousand He 
did not make use of the wise and strong, but 
took the five barley loaves and two small fishes 
from a boy. When He wished to teach who 
should be greatest in the kingdom of heaven, 
He did not point to His most faithful follower, 
but lifted an innocent and trustful child to il- 
lustrate the virtues which lead men to heavenly 
high places. The titles which are most full of 
sympathy and tenderness are those which reveal 
the youthfulness of our Saviour. He is the 
"Bright and Morning Star/' the '^Holy 
Child/' the "Only-begotten Son/' the "Day- 
spring," the "Lamb of God/' the "Prince of 
Peace/' 



103 



CHAPTER IV 
Wild Oats and Other Weeds 



Now as Jannes and Jambres * * . Paul 

''Our fathers to their graves have gone, 
Their strife is past — their triumphs won; 

But sterner trials wait the race, 
Which rises in their honored place — 

A moral warfare with the crime 
And folly of an evil time." — Whittier, 

It looks very much as if existing tendencies were in 
the dead-line of vice. — Josiah Strong. 

And at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity- 
Fair: it is kept all the year long. — John Bunyan. 

No sooner is a temple built to God, but the Devil 
builds a chapel hard by. — Herbert. 

When a yung m.an beginz tu go down hil evrithing 
seams tu bee greezed fur the ockashun. — Josh Bill- 
ings. 

''The bird which is ensnared by one leg is as surely 
the prey of the fowler as if it were seized by both 
wings." 

**He that spares vice wrongs virtue." 

Better be unborn than untaught; for ignorance is 
the root of misfortune. — Plato, 



1 06 



CHAPTER IV. 

WILD OATS AND OTHER WEEDS. 

THE subject of morals is a serious and 
delicate study. To unfairly shade 
the moral character of an individ- 
ual or any class of individuals is 
not only a gross injustice but it is slander. Be 
the facts what they may, questions which in- 
volve moral character should never be discuss- 
ed, nor commented upon, except to commend 
and praise, unless some definite salutary end 
is to be achieved. 

The truth should be scrupulously followed 
in all such discussions. A sacred responsibility 
always attends the publication of facts regard- 
ing adverse moral conditions. Parading and 
advertising sin and wickedness before the pub- 
lic often rivals, if it does not surpass in its 
demoralizing eflfects, the direct injury inflicted 
by their committal. Immoral gossip is of itself 
a loathsome disease and never a remedy. 
None should discuss the subject without ear- 
nestly praying 

107 



Manhood's Morning. 

'Tair charity, be thou my guest 

And be thy constant couch my breast/* 

I am not among- those who believe that the 
young men of America are devoid of virtue and 
goodness. On the contrary, I know they fur- 
nish innumerable examples of manhood of the 
highest and noblest type. In every community 
may be found young men who are noble in 
heart and pure in character. They can be found 
in every postition in life. They may be poor 
in purse, brawny of muscle and ordinary of 
brain, but they are the salt of the earth and the 
light of the world ; veritable temples in which 
dwell the attributes of divinity and the higher 
qualities of manly character. 

The thirteen million young men of America, 
taken as a whole, represent inherent powers for 
development, somewhat latent though they may 
be, that are inexpressibly inspiring and full of 
promise. They are honest, industrious, patri- 
otic and noble-hearted. They are in full sympa- 
thy with the principles of liberty, truth and 
justice. They are of honorable birth ; they can 
boast of patriotic and virtuous ancestry. Their 
inherited and natural characteristics are an em- 
bodiment of those traits of manhood which in- 
sure national honor and which maintain with 
sacred loyalty the duties of citizenship. 

It is an incontrovertible fact that the past 

io8 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

has been marked by an improvement in morals. 
Mankind is growing better. The standards to 
which men must aspire are, however, constant- 
ly being raised. The world is improving and 
demanding better men. The standards have 
advanced more rapidly than men have. While 
men have improved they are further from the 
standards — from what they should be — than 
ever before. While men were never so good as 
now the imperative demand that they climb to 
a still higher plane was never so great. 

It must he admitted that vice and evil habits 
continue to rage in the land. It must also be 
admitted that young men are the chief trans- 
gressors. From one border of our country 
to the other, among the high and the low, the 
cultured and the ignorant, the rich and the 
poor, the prominent and the obscure ; wher- 
ever young men abound, there come unmistak- 
able evidences of a moral degeneracy deplor- 
able in the extreme. Never in the history of 
our nation were vice and immorality so power- 
fully and systematically organized as they are 
to-day. Wickedness revels and wallows in 
moral filth and fatness and young men, legion 
upon legion, are charmed and led astray by its 
fascinations, and, filled with a wild passion for 
pleasure, they sacrifice the flower of their man- 
hood at its bidding, and worship at its shrine. 
Indeed, personal and social impurity, vice, 

109 



Manhood's Morning. 

evil habits, intemperance and morbid dissipa- 
tion have become recognized characteristics of 
the young men of the nation. In too many 
homes may it be said 

'^The tones of every household voice 

Are grown more sad and deep, 
And the sweet word — brother — wakes a wish 

To turn aside and weep." 

There are few epithets more stigmatizing 
than to say that a young fellow ''has gone Hke 
most young men.'' It means that he has gone 
to the bad. To gain the reputation of being 
''one of the boys'' is little short of ill repute. 
It is a sad fact that the experience of too many 
of our boys and young men from their earli- 
est career as such, is little else than a panorama 
of vice and wickedness. 

Those who have made a study of secret and 
social sins are appalled at the terrible array of 
facts which confronts them. This should not 
be so. Because the time has come when a high 
rating must be placed upon manhood. An in- 
evitable result of advancing civilization has 
been to bring the physical and moral natures 
of men into close relations. As man progresses 
in the upward scale an increasing demand is 
made for the exercise of all his parts — muscle, 
mind, talents, genius and heart — and the prob- 

IIO 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

lem of bringing all these attributes of his na- 
ture into harmonious action must not remain 
unsolved. When men gained a livelihood al- 
most wholly by manual labor, physical strength 
was a chief virtue. But man's duties now con- 
sist of responsibility rather than labor, and call 
for powers of a higher and more complex na- 
ture than simple physical force. 

Never were vice and wickedness so vitally 
antagonistic to success, prosperity and progress 
as they are to-day. Morals have become an 
economic question. Virtue to a remarkable de- 
gree has become a fundamental principle of our 
government. All genuine progress must be 
marked by the increase of moral cleanliness 
and the spread of social purity. Every young 
man who forsakes a high moral standard be- 
comes less and less a part of the national great- 
ness in the highest and best sense. 

Many people seem to regard vice, evil habits 
and the various species of "wild oats" as sim- 
ply morbid growths, like warts on the fingers 
or corns on the toes, and believe that some day 
they will mysteriously disappear never to be 
seen or felt again. Such delusions ruin more 
young men than war, pestilence and famine 
combined. Vice is the devil's weapon, and its 
mission is to ensnare, delude, blight and 
damn. When a young man acquires the habit 
of the smallest vice he opens the way for others. 

Ill 



Manhood's Morning. 

No matter whether it be physical, mental, or 
moral, the contagion runs through the entire 
nature. 

"Faults in the life breed errors in the brain, 
And these, reciprocally, those again, 
The mind and conduct mutually imprint. 
And stamp their image in each other's mint." 

Thus it is that evil habits and vices of all 
kinds are so closely related — always associated, 
acting and reacting upon each other — that it is 
impossible to tell where they begin, or just how 
much any single one insures or helps the work 
of ruin. 

Irreverence is almost an universal vice among 
young men, A deplorable lack of reverence is 
shown for superiors and for sacred things, for 
parents and for the aged, for womanhood, for 
religion and for law and order. Perhaps of 
nothing else are young men so universally guil- 
ty. The coarse remark, the unkind ridicule 
and the cruel whisper is seldom suppressed or 
even rebuked. They find it so easy to sneer 
that they take to it naturally. Milton says : 
'*A beardless cynic is the shame of nature,'' 
yet they can be found everywhere. Young 
men are more given to idle gossip, to defama- 
tion and to scandal than any other class. Says 
a recent writer : ''Women are rapidly going out 

112 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

of the gossiping business and men are taking 
their places/' This assertion is too true. 
Young men are the most heartless gossipers in 
the world and by none is calumny prated 
with such merciless injustice. They originate 
more blighting and ruinous defamations of vir- 
tue and character, and feed the flames of scan- 
dal with more indifference and rancor, than all 
others combined. Filial affection and honor 
toward parenthood and a devout and manly 
reverence for religion and holy things are vir- 
tues sadly too rare. The tender and humane, 
the merciful and reverential in man are greatly 
in need of cultivation. 

Reverence and respect for that which is 
higher and greater than we are, show the 
stamp of good breeding. The young man who 
fails to develop these virtues in his life robs 
himself of the most manly and elevating pos- 
session. Reverence toward parents, the aged, 
womanhood and God, gives to young men a no- 
bility of character secured in no other way. 

Vulgarity is a national curse. The habit of 
saying and doing vulgar things is a common 
vice. Vulgar yarns, stories and jokes, vulgar 
by-words and smutty phrases and off-color 
insinuations travel like wildfire among young 
men. Indeed masculine conversation is be- 
smirched with these things. They find their 
way into the newspapers, dime novels and much 



Manhood's Morning. 

of our cheap literature. Let a real smutty 
joke be unearthed within some focus of in- 
iquity in New York City and it will climb the 
Alleghenies, travel through the Mississippi 
Valley and over the western plains and be 
hawked about the streets of San Francisco in 
less than a week. It is the debasing and pol- 
luting feature of the language. Thousands of 
young men think or talk little else. 

Almost all knowledge imparted to boys con- 
cerning the sacred relations of the sexes, and 
of the transmitting forces of life is clothed in 
language as vulgar and obscene as ever echoed 
in the streets of Sodom. It flows like the 
breath from lip to lip, from men to boys, from 
boys to children until its blighting and damning 
voice is heard upon every side. As a conse- 
quence there is an indellible immoral taint to 
the imagination of almost every mind. 

Vulgar pictures meet the gaze everywhere. 
Cigar and tobacco stores are panoramas of ar- 
tistic lewdness. Advertisements of cheap the- 
atrical performances cater to sensuality almost 
entirely. They are so made because the mor- 
bid tastes of young men are attracted by the 
carnality which they suggest. 

No bait is more captivating to the average 
young man than a questionable picture, and 
cigarette manufacturers have, by offering such 
as prizes to purchasers of their goods, wrought 

114 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

an injury upon youthful minds only surpassed 
by the smoking of their vile and drugged con- 
coctions of tobacco. 

The naked bosom of the ballroom and dance 
hall and the padded legs in silken tights upon 
the stage, simply meet a popular demand for 
such things. Their influence upon the moral 
character of young men is such that the devil 
and all his angels might be challenged to pro- 
duce something more alluring and vile in re- 
sults. 

It is not the nude, but the vulgar in nature 
and art that leads to defilement of mind and 
heart. A picture or statue does not have to be 
nude to be vulgar. Indeed, this has but little to 
do with it. 

A British painter was criticised for exhibit- 
ing nude pictures upon the walls of the Royal 
Academy at each annual exhibition. In re- 
sponse to the criticism he exhibited, the fol- 
lowing year, two pictures, one of which was 
remarkable for its purity, yet entirely nude, 
and the other a female figure entirely draped 
with the exception of one eye. In that one eye 
he depicted suggestions which he had always 
labored to avoid in other paintings, thus prov- 
ing that vulgarity and sensuality are entirely 
distinct from genuine art and beauty. An ar- 
tistic picture or piece of statuary may stand 
out in absolute nudeness and yet inspire pure 

"5 



Manhood's Morning. 

and noble thoughts. When art is fashioned in 
vulgar curves and expressions, what would oth- 
erwise be proper, becomes an arrow laden with 
sensual poison ready to pierce the heart of any 
and all who will yield to the tempter. Art has 
a responsible and sacred mission in the cause 
of reverence, purity and virtue. 

Profanity rages among young men. It is 
said that "profanity is our national sin,'' and 
that ''America is the profanest nation in the 
world.'' These assertions are too true. Old 
men swear, young men swear, boys swear, 
children swear. Curses — deliberate and vile, 
cowardly and terrible, bloodcurdling and blas- 
phemous — can be heard upon every side. There 
are legions of young men who cannot empha- 
size what they have to say unless they resort 
to oaths to do it. Profanity takes the place of 
adjectives, adverbs, interjections and exclama- 
tion points. The language of some persons is 
distorted almost beyond comprehension by 
oaths. When they are in society which is too 
decent to tolerate vile, blasphemous speech they 
are totally incapable of expressing their ideas. 

The chronic swearer becomes constitutionally 
afflicted. The habit becomes second nature and 
an organic part of the language. Such victims 
always lament their fate. They despise the 
habit but they are its slaves. Profane lan- 
guage is the most execrable and vile that pol- 

ii6 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

lutes the tongue and of all men the victim of 
such a habit is one of the most pitiable. 

Swearing is not only a useless but a stupid 
habit. It soon creates a poverty of expression 
and betrays a morbid and depraved mind. It 
tends to destroy refinement and culture and 
promote a coarse and brutal instinct. No mat- 
ter how brilliant in mind or how generous in 
spirit a man may be, the habit of profanity will 
warp and contaminate his mind, and destroy the 
finer and nobler qualities of his character. 

Vulgarity and profanity are twin vices. They 
co-operate in working injury. They are both 
mental habits and tend to destroy the very best 
part of man — his self-respect, his personal mag- 
netism and his love for that which is virtuous 
and beautiful. 

Tobacco is used by young men to a deplor- 
able extent. Its use is not far from universal. 
Legions chew it, legions smoke it, legions use 
it in both ways. Tobacco is the Youths-bane 
of modern civilization. The cigarette fiend is 
legion. 

About $750,000,000, are spent annually for 
tobacco in the United States. This vast sum is 
chewed and smoked up, and young men con- 
sume a large share of it. If this vast sum were 
turned into houses and furniture it would give 
to one thousand young men a fifteen hundred 
dollar house, furnished with five hundred dol- 

117 



Manhood's Morning. 

lars' worth of furniture, every day in the year. 
In other words, it would handsomely supply 
one thousand newly married couples with a re- 
spectable house and home every morning. 

According to the Report of the Commis- 
sioner of Internal Revenue for 1900, there were 
manufactured in the United States during that 
year, for home consumption, the enormous 
number of 3,258,716,305 cigarettes. Nearly 
all of these are smoked by young men. If these 
cigarettes were laid end to end in a row they 
would encircle the earth three times. It takes 
about ten minutes to smoke a cigarette, at which 
rate, to consume our annual out-put, it would 
keep busy, for ten hours every day in the year, 
no less than one hundred and forty-eight thou- 
sand men. 

During the same year there were manufac- 
tured 6,176,596,421 cigars. It takes about fif- 
teen minutes to smoke a cigar, at which rate, to 
consume the number manufactured, it would 
require four hundred and thirty thousand men, 
smoking ten hours per day, every day in the 
year. 

But this is not all. There were manufactured 
during the same year 101,548,467 pounds of 
smoking tobacco. To smoke this quantity 
would require, smoking ten hours daily, about 
one and one-fourth million men. 

The habit of smoking in our nation is equal 

118 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

to nearly one and one-half million men smok- 
ing ten hours daily and fully one-half of this is 
done by young men. 

There were used in the manufacture of the 
cigarettes 13,000,000 pounds of tobacco, and 
in the cigars 104,000,000 pounds of the weed. 
With this vast amount of nicotine poison were 
put immense quantities of opium, valerian, 
guiaic and other drugs, all intended to make 
the habit more fascinating and the effect more 
sedative and deceptive. 

The annual production of manufactured 
''plug'' and ''fine-cut'' was 185,353,411 pounds. 
There are at least one hundred chews in a 
pound of tobacco, and each chew will consume 
about one-half hour. At this rate it requires 
two and one-half million men, each chewing 
ten hours daily, to masticate the annual output. 

The great army of tobacco consumers, sup- 
posing that each one is either chewing or smok- 
ing ten hours daily, Sunday included, may be 
calculated about as follows : 

MEN 
REQUIRED. 

Smol<:ing 3,258,716,305 Cigarettes 148,000 

'' 6,176,596,421 Cigars 430,000 

'' 101,548,476 lbs. Tobacco 1,225,000 

Chewing 185,353,411 lbs. Tobacco 2,500,000 

Men chewing or smoking 10 hours daily . . 4,303,000 
This is equal to two-thirds of all the men 
119 



Manhood's Morning. 

in the United States devoting three hours daily 
in using tobacco. This estimate is surely very 
conservative. What a tremendous power this 
subtle and destroying narcotic poison exercises 
over American manhood? 

When we consider that nearly all the ci- 
garettes, at least one-half of the cigars, and a 
large share of the smoking and chewing to- 
bacco, are consumed by young men, the extent 
to which they indulge in tobacco is partly re- 
alized. 

While many old men use it, yet nineteen- 
twentieths of them acquired the habit when 
young. At least one thousand boys and young 
men begin to use tobacco every day in the year. 
Many of them get their first lesson by picking 
up cigar stumps in the streets, cast away by 
Christians, and suck themselves sick. Others, 
to secure the weed, pick the pockets of their 
fathers, and, in seclusion, learn to smoke and 
chew like their elders. A whole legion, tempt- 
ed by vulgar and alluring prize pictures, spend 
their pennies for cigarettes, and treat their 
companions in imitation of the common custom 
among men. No vice so decoys its victirris to 
habits of personal nastiness, deceit, dishonesty, 
licentiousness and profligacy. 

While less money is spent for tobacco than 
for liquors, it is so much cheaper from a physi- 
ological standpoint, that the consumption of to- 

I20 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

bacco should be considered as vastly greater 
than that of Hquors. Ten cents will purchase 
twenty cigarettes, from one to several cigars, 
and many chews of tobacco, while it will buy 
only two glasses of beer or one glass of wine or 
whiskey. 

The annual product of tobacco in the United 
States is over 400,000,000 pounds. It con- 
tains from two to eight per cent, of nicotine, 
which is a deadly poison. One pound of to- 
bacco contains poison sufficient to kill three 
hundred men if taken in a way to secure its full 
effects. If what is chewed and smoked were 
swallowed it would kill every man, woman and 
child three times a day. If young men consume 
one half of it they smoke and chew enough 
poison, if taken inwardly, to kill them five thou- 
sand times annually or, a fatal dose every two 
hours, were they not accustomed to its use, 
daily the year around. 

Intemperance is common among young men. 
There is serious danger of America becoming 
a nation of drunkards. For forty years the 
per capita consumption of alcoholic liquors 
has rapidly increased. It is increasing at the 
present time. In many localities the man who 
don't drink more or less is the exception and 
not the rule. Especially is this true of young 
men. They are attracted to the barroom almost 
as easily as pigs are to the swill. 

121 



Manhood's Morning. 

There are about 250,000 liquor and beer sa- 
loons in the United States, or one for every 
fifty young men. The people annually consume 
over over one hundred million gallons of strong 
liquors and about one billion gallons of beer. 
There are sixty drinks of liquor and about 
sixteen drinks of beer in a gallon. This would 
make six billion drinks of liquor and sixteen 
billion glasses of beer, or twenty-two billion 
drinks altogether, which find their way, every 
year, down the throats of the American people. 
It would seem that more than one-half of this 
is drank by young men. This allows over 
eleven hundred drinks annually to each young 
man, or three drams every day in the year. 
From time to time an effort has been made by 
Christian Associations, and by those interested 
in the subject of young men, to find out to 
what extent they drink as compared with those 
older in years. The result of all investigations 
reveals the fact that overwhelmingly young 
men compose the drinking class. Instead of 
''old toper" we should say ''young toper,'' as 
the great majority of such appear to be young 
men. 

The following data were collected by reliable 
persons under special instructions and show 
what is going on all the time in almost every 
populous section of our land. The figures are 
not guess-work, but are actual counts made 

122 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

upon the spot. In a city of 32,000 inhabitants 
600 young men entered five of the prominent 
saloons in one hour. There are one hundred 
and thirty-five saloons in the city. In a city 
of 30,000 population 452 young men entered 
four saloons in two hours. In a large western 
city 478 persons were seen to enter a single 
saloon in one night and nearly all of them 
were young men. In another large city 236 
young men went into a prominent saloon in one 
hour. In a town with 11,000 population 725 
young men visited thirty-four of the fifty sa- 
loons of the city in one night. In an eastern 
manufacturing city, the Y. M. C. A. Secretary 
visited nineteen saloons during one evening 
and found 275 young men therein. Had he 
visited all the saloons of the city and found a 
proportionate number in each he would have 
found 6,000 young men in the saloons of the 
entire city. 

In another eastern city, with a population of 
130,000, during one Saturday evening, 355 
young men entered five saloons in two hours. 
It was estimated that not less than 5,000 en- 
tered the one hundred saloons of the city dur- 
ing the same evening. 

It is estimated that fully 4,000 young men 
enter a single saloon in one of our largest east- 
ern cities daily. In San Francisco during one 
Sunday and Sunday night 15,933 young men 

123 



Manhood's Morning. 

were counted at base-ball, theatres, saloons and 
dens of iniquity, and the Sunday evening be- 
fore 1892 young men attended all the churches 
of the city. In a city of 30,000 population there 
are 150 saloons and 1045 young men entered 
seven of them one Saturday night, and only 75 
attended all the churches of the city next day. 
In a town of 7,000 inhabitants 130 young men 
entered three saloons in a single hour. In a 
city of 17,000 population more than one-third 
of all the young men in the city went into the 
drinking saloons in one hour during a Satur- 
day night. 

The above statistics, while not new, they 
can be verified at any time. Similar data have 
been collected under various auspices, and the 
unanimous result has been that North, South, 
East and West, w^herever saloons exist, an al- 
most universal habit of dissipation among 
young men is revealed. 

The liquor bill of the nation has grown to be 
over one billion dollars, and the most of this 
money is hard earned cash from the pockets 
of young men who can ill afford to spend it. 
Nearly two billion dollars are annually spent 
for liquor and tobacco. Together they form 
the most gigantic and influential system of busi- 
ness enterprise the nation supports. 

From one-third to one-half of this enormous 
sum is spent by young men. This means that 

124 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

they spend from $600,000,000 to $1,000,- 
000,000 annually for that which inflicts a direct 
and permanent injury. A very conservative 
estimate would regard it fully one-seventh of 
all they earn. 

The use of tobacco and liquor is a wedded 
vice. Young men drink because they use to- 
bacco, and they use tobacco because they drink. 
They forfeit their manhood and social stand- 
ing, waste their health, time and money, dis- 
grace their name and break the laws because 
they use both. These habits destroy nerve 
force, dwarf all the finer elements of manhood 
and breed ignorance, filth and laziness. The 
nicotine of tobacco, dissolved in the alcohol of 
beer and whiskey, finds its way to the deepest 
and innermost vitals. Thus commingled, they 
force each other into action, the whole body 
becomes poison-soaked and pickled, and only 
th^ shadow of the original man is retained. 
Within the vitals of the young men of Amer- 
ica, these two elements are daily poisoning and 
devitalizing untold millions of human beings 
yet unborn, inflicting an inevitable curse upon 
posterity, the result of which will be children 
with debilitated nerves, impaired intellects, ab- 
normal appetites and passions, and weakened 
powers of will. The use of these two agents — 
alcohol and tobacco — is inflicting upon the 
young manhood of America, at the present 

125 



Manhood's Morning. 

time, a greater curse than was ever wrought 
by any other agents upon any people in any 
age in human history. They challenge in their 
destructive effects the blackest and saddest 
records of either plague, famine, or war. To a 
remarkable degree they assist each other in 
human destruction. They are co-workers with 
the devil, and Satan himself, were he given uni- 
versal dominion and power, could not devise 
two agents to operate more in harmony to 
dwarf, to degrade, to blight, to destroy, to 
kill and damn the men of the nation. 

The vice of self-pollution is an existing curse. 
Those in a position to know pronounce it a 
common habit among young men. They are its 
chief and choice prey. In silence and in dark- 
ness, unheard and unseen, it spreads like a 
contagious disease, from one to many — from 
man to men and from boy to boys — until its 
influence is a national scourge, from which, 
alas ! alas ! too few escape. Unlike any other 
vice, it can be practiced without anyone but 
the guilty victim knowing it, until the effects of 
its ravages are written in the countenance. 

It is impossible to know to what extent the 
habit prevails. It is enough to know that it is 
abroad in the land. Every student of moral 
and social conditions knows that it is a com- 
mon evil, and that no vice is more strongly en- 
couraged by passion. One writer of national 

126 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

reputation says : 'The extent to which the habit 
is carried on is amazing/' Another who has 
consulted a large number of prominent physi- 
cians upon the subject says : 'Thysicians of 
large practice can be found almost everywhere 
ready to testify that the habit is well nigh uni- 
versal/' That such statements can remain un- 
challenged is a disgraceful reproach, not only 
upon young manhood, but upon fatherhood and 
motherhood and every other force, be it Chris- 
tian, heathen or pagan, that can wield an in- 
fluence against this life and soul destroying sin. 
While there is no habit among the young to 
which parents and teachers should give more 
attention, yet there is none perhaps to which 
they give so little concern. 

Licentiousness prevails among young men. 
The libertine, the leper and the moral rake are 
legion. The seducer of virtue struts in triumph 
upon every side. Our nation fairly swarms 
with young men who look upon woman as a fit 
subject for beastly indulgence. With one eye 
they will jealously guard their own kith and 
kindred, yet with the other eye they will watch 
for game upon which to satisfy their brutal na- 
tures and polluted appetites. It is a common 
belief that history is simply time revolving, and 
that at long intervals it repeats itself. It does 
seem that the wanton indulgences that have 
sent nations into disgraced oblivion were threat- 

127 



Manhood's Morning. 

ening American manhood. Greece, Venice and 
Rome, through prostitution, wantonness and 
Hbertinism, fell from eminence in civilization 
into darkness and ruin, and these vices are the 
menace that threatens America to-day. 

The extent to which licentiousness is prac- 
ticed is a question upon which opinions differ 
only in degree. All know that it is a prevalent 
and alarming evil. All conclusions must of ne- 
cessity be largely guess-work. The vice is con- 
centrated among women and diffused among 
men. Young men are its chief followers. Be- 
tween twenty and thirty is the period in which 
men are most given to the habit. It is esti- 
mated that for every fallen woman there are 
from five to eight fallen men. The eminent 
Rev. B. D. DaCosta, D. D., of New York City, 
says : *Tf one wants to know the number of im- 
pure men in a community, all that is necessary 
is to find the number of impure women and 
multiply it by five." This rule will, no doubt, 
more than hold good. 

The social evil in large cities is organized 
upon a business basis. Legions of young men 
flock into the great centres of population and 
find themselves surrounded by vicious influ- 
ences which only the most determined qualities 
of character can resist. In many sections of 
the great West, prostitution, in an indirect way, 
is licensed, thus practically receiving the sanc- 

128 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

tion of the law. Licentiousness — debasing, vile 
and doubly criminal — was the greatest curse 
connected with human slavery, and it still con- 
tinues as a blighting and sinful outrage of the 
Southern States. 

The police raids and exposures occasionally 
made in various large cities, while they show 
only the most flagrant transgressions, reveal a 
state of moral degeneracy very deplorable. It 
has been estimated that there are 40,000 prosti- 
tutes in New York City. This seems monstrous, 
yet the estimate is from reliable sources. More 
conservative observers place the number at 
25,000. This evidently is entirely within the 
facts. Chicago, it is claimed, has 30,060. 
Pittsburg and other cities are not far behind. 

A writer in The Arena, who is pastor of a 
church, in an article entitled, ''The Social Evil 
in Philadelphia,'' says : ''As many as five thou- 
sand women live among us by the sale of their 
bodies. I wish I might have confidence that the 
estimate is too high; but nearly six years of 
observation make me fear that the figures are 
much too low.'' This estimate includes simply 
what might be classed as "professionals" and 
does not embrace a "vast multitude" whose 
shame escapes the lawless bed-house and broth- 
el. From the large cities, in an organized form, 
it finds its way into smaller cities and towns 
until its lecherous presence is everywhere. It 

9 129 



Manhood's Morning. 

has become insolent and bold and is condoned 
where, years ago, it would have been intoler- 
able. 

Licentiousness in the nation is not woman's 
but man's sin. Referring to the fallen women 
of New York City, Mr. Samuel C. Blackwell, 
a reliable authority says : ''As a rule, each one 
of them was misled before she fell; cunning 
flattery, money, deceit, falsehood, possibly force 
led her to a fate she did not choose." Says 
Mrs. Dora Webb in a recent public address : 
''Immigrants arriving in New York City fur- 
nish 20,000 victims annually," and that "young 
girls are kidnapped, entrapped by deceptions, 
bought and sold for cash like slaves in the mar- 
ket of lust." And what is true of New York 
City is true the nation over. Mrs. Charlton Ed- 
holm, of Chicago, in a recent address in Balti- 
more, said : "I stand here in the presence of 
God to say that of the 230,000 erring girls in 
this land three-fourths of them have been 
snared and trapped, bought and sold." 

Says Mr. J. B. Welty, a man of careful in- 
vestigation : "To supply the demands of pas- 
sion in men, one hundred families must give 
up a daughter apiece every day in the round 
year. What a draft is this on homes ! What 
sin and shame and misery and heartaches and 
remorse and cruelty and murder and death and 
damnation this means !" How few of us re- 

130 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

member and appreciate the words of the poet 
who wrote : 



''O, wronged and scarred and stained with ill, 
Behold ! thou art a woman still." 



Men need to be taught that the social evil 
is their affair. The degradation is their work. 
Four-fifths of it is carried on by young men. 
Social impurity the world over is man's power 
against woman's weakness ; man's cunning 
against woman's credulity; man's willingness 
to traduce against woman's nature to trust. 
Too often it is his passions against her poverty, 
and his subtle wile against her confiding 
innocence. ''Not one woman in a hundred 
will seek her own shame." It is the unbridled 
and fiendish passions of man that steeps our 
nation in crimson crime, and not the seductive 
charms of fallen women, as too many would 
have us believe. Man is the artful designer 
and aggressor, the seducer and adulterer and 
woman is his victim. 

Disgra,ced and fallen womanhood is not so 
much a cause of licentiousness as it is a result 
of it. Were Christ to again write with his 
finger in the sands of earth w^hat a multitude of 
young m.en there are who could not look upon 
the words ! Were His example put in practice 
in our nation to-day, how the tears of a redeem- 



Manhood's Morning. 

ed womanhood would fall at His feet; how 
the mountains, dark corners and hiding places 
would be filled with men ! To what a vast 
legion is the Seventh Commandment a dead 
letter ! What a horde of human brutes stand 
ready to humiliate and disgrace the American 
home ! How little parenthood is honored ; how 
meanly sisterhood is prized ; how contemptibly 
virtue is esteemed? How villainy, while its 
blood is hot with unholy lust, coos and caresses, 
pleads and palavers, and when its mad passion 
has made its conquests, how it skulks in triumph 
while its victims, disgraced, ostracised and so- 
cially damned, are forced in silent remorse to 
drink sorrow's bitterest dregs ! 

When homes have been pillaged of virtue 
and fair daughters led astray, how deep is the 
precipice over which they must fall ! How 
mammon's wild traders, organized for the pur- 
pose, gather them in and stamp their shattered 
bodies with a price ! How resistless is the 
power that transforms filial affection into car- 
nal mockery ! How cruel is the tyranny which 
demands that the sweet song of the sister be- 
come the silly strains of the siren and that the 
sacred kiss for a lover become a medium of 
lust upon the polluted lips of the leper ! When 
the sweet and beautiful souls of maidens have 
become the black and blighted shadows of har- 
lotry and scavengers in human flesh have stock- 

132 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

ed their haunts of shame with such merchan- 
dise, what a legion of young men are, Hke 
brutes, only too wilHng to feed upon the offal ! 
The vice of gambling in many localities is 
common among young men. There is much 
more gambling going on than real good people 
suppose. Tens of thousands of young men are 
infatuated by it and its influence over them is 
enslaving in the extreme. Betting upon elec- 
tions, prize fights, horse races, bicycle races, 
base ball, foot ball and other games, in the pool 
room and at the card table is a practice entirely 
too common. 

Boys and young men are exceedingly credu- 
lous and they are easily infatuated by every 
kind of fake that offers much for little. Those 
whose earnings are small, and those with larger 
incomes, are all eager to swell their coffers. 
The temptation to resort to get-rich-quick 
schemes, in order to fill the pockets with cash, 
is keen and dazzling. The pathway of young 
men is literally deluged with captivating in- 
ducements to try their hands in schemes where 
luck, and not strict business methods is in- 
volved. Unprincipled sharpers reap a rich har- 
vest from the hard earned savings of young 
men, and in return give only an opportunity to 
meditate upon their losses or plunge deeper into 
the entangling net of dishonesty and chance. 

Ignorance is too common among young men. 

133 



Manhood's Morning. 

By ignorance is meant a lack of that kind of 
knowledge which is essential to man's high- 
est possibilities. There is an ignorance on ac- 
count of which men do what is wrong, suffer 
disease and misfortune, and prematurely die. 
Ignorance is decay. ^'My people are destroyed 
for lack of knowledge,'^ said the inspired 
writer. The young men of to-day lack this very 
kind of wisdom. Much of the wickedness and 
misery in the world is ignorance. The world 
is filled with tragedies that knowledge would 
have prevented. During times of peace com- 
petition and rivalry among men become intense, 
and to be intelligently equipped is the best guar- 
antee of genuine success. Knowledge is power, 
safety and protection. A cultivated intellect, 
a trained reason, a disciplined will and educa- 
ted faculties have become essential elements of 
citizenship. 

It is necessary that man's education embrace 
a knowledge of not only physical and financial, 
but moral, social and spiritual things. To waste 
the intellectual powers upon insipid and non- 
elevating subjects entirely is the mistake of le- 
gions of young men. Newspapers which pa- 
rade sensational news, accounts of prize-fights, 
police episodes, lapses of virtue and honor, 
sports of a low order, and which fill their pages 
with suggestive pictures and off-color slang and 
jokes, are the sort that are too generally popu- 

134 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

lar. The pornographic titles of books sold for 
five and ten cents at news-stands show the pop- 
ular demand for literary trash. 

Most young men have an acquired appetite 
for morbid details and suggestive illustrations. 
They read that which stirs the blood and 
arouses the prejudices and passions. That 
kind of knowledge which adds value to charac- 
ter and joy to life and which only a healthy and 
pure mind can enjoy is discarded by multitudes 
of yaung men. Such literature makes them 
tired. The Bible is never opened by millions 
of young men. The church is boycotted by 
nearly as many. They do not read a verse of 
scripture nor hear a sermon once a year. Only 
a small per cent, are church members and a less 
number are active in religious work. They do 
not seem to consider moral and religious teach- 
ings within the scope of their needs. They are 
not only ignorant, but oblivious of the needs 
and activities of the moral and religious world. 

At lectures and literary entertainments 
young men are conspicuous by their absence. 
Two of the most famous and entertaining ora- 
tors in America, each recently delivered a lec- 
ture upon popular subjects — one lecture being 
especially for young people — in one of our 
largest cities, and although they were well ad- 
vertised and delivered in a magnificent public 
hall, in the heart of the city, not twenty young 

135 



Manhood's Morning. 

men attended either; yet at the same hour 
over three thousand were attending theatres 
not ten squares away. 

One of the most difficult problems with 
which our institutions of learning — literary, 
medical and law colleges, and even theological 
seminaries — are called upon to contend, con- 
sists in keeping under subjection the coarse 
animalism and unbridled sensual appetites of 
those whom they are trying to educate and train 
for the active and serious duties of life. Indul- 
gent and well-meaning parents often use the 
college to reform their profligate and incorri- 
gible sons. The effect has been to spread vice 
of an educated sort, and give to the cause of 
social iniquity, recruits, able and willing to 
champion its right to exist. 

Lawlessness and crime are on the increase. 
Criminals of all kinds abound. Tramps, gam- 
blers, bummers, loafers, dead-beats, confidence 
men, professional pick-pockets, thieves, high- 
way robbers, burglars, murderers and petty 
criminals are not only numerous, but increasing 
in proportion more rapidly than the population. 
They are all largely composed of young men. 
Statistics tell us that the average criminal is 
twenty-six years and four months old, and that 
the reinforcements to the legions of law-break- 
ers are almost entirely young in years. There 
are a vast army of tramps in the United States, 

136 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

wandering about without home or friends. 
These men are tough, filthy, and, many of them, 
infested with vermin. They sleep in the barns, 
bushes and outhouses and beg from door to 
door. An overwhelming majority of them are 
young men. 

A drove of professional tramps arrested by 
the police of a certain city were described as 
follows : ^^No tougher looking lot of men ever 
passed through the door of the Central Sta- 
tion than this collection of professional loafers. 
They were all stout, able-bodied fellows, well 
able to support themselves if they felt so in- 
clined, and all of them between fifteen and thirty 
years of age.'' 

According to the last Census report there 
were, 82,329 prisoners in the various peniten- 
tiaries and prisons of the United States, and 
more than half of them were young men. There 
were, at the same time, 7,386 persons in prison 
charged with murder. Of this number 393 
were women, but considerably more than one- 
half were young men. Of the 45,233 persons 
serving sentence in various penitentiaries only 
1,791 were women, but young men composed a 
large majority of the whole. During the past 
ten years the number of female criminals has 
decreased, but the number of males has very 
markedly increased. During recent years mur- 
der has increased fivefold. The same Census 

137 



Manhood's Morning. 

reports 14,846 children in the different reforma- 
tories, and of this number 11,535 were boys. 
The insane asylums contained 97,535 inmates ; 
the almshouses, 73,045 ; the county jails, 19,535, 
and almost every institution in the land for de- 
fectives is crowded to the fullest capacity. 
While the majority of these unfortunates may 
not be young men, yet such conditions are 
more the result of wild oats sown by young 
men, who afterward become fathers, than all 
other causes combined. 

Dr. J. W. Clokey, of Indiana, who has care- 
fully studied this subject, says : ''It is placing 
the figures inside the facts, rather than outside, 
to say that at any given time in the United 
States there are 150,000 convicts in its peniten- 
tiaries, prisons, jails and houses of refuge and 
correction." A good authority states that: 
''Not more than one-fifth of the active criminals 
are in prison at the same time.'' This would 
give our nation an enormous criminal popula- 
tion. Mr. Moody, in an address dehvered in 
Philadelphia, said: "There are 750,000 per- 
sons in this country who belong to the crim- 
inal class, and statistics show that the num- 
ber is increasing. In Massachusetts, in 1850, 
there was one criminal to every 800 of the pop- 
ulation, in 1895 there was one criminal to every 
225. More than half of the criminals are 
young men," 

138 



Wild Oats and Other Weeds. 

Indifference has become a national character- 
istic of young men. To the higher claims of 
patriotism, morahty, rehgion and humanity, 
they show an apathy akin to deadness. There 
is a disinterested lukewarmness among them, 
both widespread and profound. This lack of 
interest, on the part of young men, is one of 
the saddest features of the new century upon 
which we have entered. 

Our military force, in the event of war, is 
over ten million men, and should occasion de- 
mand it, they would, almost to the man, march 
forth at the country's call. Our force in the 
conflicts of peace is equally great. But it is 
latent and unavailable. A heedless indifference 
hangs like a pall over the young manhood of 
the nation. Within its indolent embrace all are 
made welcome. It is the enchanted ground of 
the good and the enslaving refuge of the bad. 
Under its composing influence men acquire the 
habit of being nominally anything and radically 
nothing; they cease to be either hot or cold, 
good or bad; in nothing negative, in nothing 
positive, but passive in everything. Under the 
soft music of its lullaby, life lazily lounges in 
the lap of time ; the saints of God grow easy in 
Zion; poverty and slavery, abject and cruel, 
slumber in silence, the world, clothed in con- 
formity, becomes wedded to indolence and sin. 

Indifference, careless and unconcerned, is the 

139 



Manhood's Morning. 

treason of the age. It cowardly looks on and 
blandly smirks while all that is vicious and 
wicked struts in insolent array. Swayed by its 
power, men cease to have any convictions in 
religion or principles in politics. Life's best mo- 
tives are turned into the by-paths of policy and 
its most sacred issues are laid upon the altars 
of compromise. 

Indifference is the consuming foe of man- 
hood. It chooses ambition and industry as its 
prey and even robs genius of its power. It is 
the stagnant pool where settle the miasms of in- 
dolence and lust which poison and pollute the 
fountains of life. Under its shady bowers vice, 
crime and shame find shelter, feed and flourish. 
It strongly resembles — it must be — the unpar- 
donable sin. It transforms the purest in mind 
into the vilest in thought and the noblest in 
character into the basest in action. It chills the 
enthusiasm, it dissipates the hopes and scatters 
the faith like the wind. It is deaf to duty, dumb 
to pity, and blind to care. It makes it possible 
to become dead in trespass and in sin. It saps 
the judgment, deadens the conscience and 
weakens the will. When indifference has 
gained the mastery the nobler impulses cease to 
direct, the moral nature atrophies and dies, the 
Holy Spirit is grieved away and man, in his 
moral and spiritual nature, becomes effeminate, 
powerless and undone. 

140 



.CHAPTER V. 

Some Reasons Why Young Men 
Go Wrong. 



''Cast thyself down." — The Devil. 

**Vice is a monster of so frightful mien 
As to be hateful needs but to be seen; 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

*'A child has a right to be born and not damned into 
the world." — Bishop South. 

"He who teaches not his son a trade does as though 
he taught him to be a thief.'' 

''Every man is the result of three factors — ^his an- 
cestors, his surroundings and his individuality." 

"Never since the world began has youth been so 
catered to ; never has it been surrounded by so many 
open temptations; never so much flattered, and yet 
at the same time never have the reins of discipline 
been so relaxed." — Amelia E. Barr. 

"It may be said with measurable truthfulness that 
half the art of Christian living consists in shunning 
temptation." — /. G. Holland. 

"Hints shrewdly strown mightily disturb the spirit. 

The sly suggestion toucheth nerves, and nerves con- 
tract the fronds. 

And the sensitive mimosa of affection trembleth to 
its root.'' 



142 



CHAPTER V. 

SOME REASONS WHY YOUNG MEN GO WRONG. 

THE influences which shape the Hves 
and mould the character of young 
men are varied and complex. Like 
everything else in nature, young 
men are an outgrowth of forces and circum- 
stances for which they are not responsible and 
over which they can exercise but little control. 
Life does not begin at birth, but it runs back 
into ancestry. It is not bounded by the limi- 
tations of its own sphere, but it is a part of all 
the environments which surround it. 

Many of the things which go to make up 
man are manufactured articles. The fact that 
so many young men are wayward and wild 
does not prove their guilt any more clearly 
than it proves that the forces which brought 
them into existence, and which have moulded 
them into what they are, have been faulty and 
corrupt. 

Every one knows that the young manhood 
of America is surrounded upon every side by 
influences which strongly tend to weaken phys- 

143 



Manhood's Morning. 

ical vigor, overthrow moral character and 
bring to naught the best energies and aims of 
life. ^'No man lives without jostling and being 
jostled; and in all ways he has to elbow him- 
self through the world, giving and receiving 
offense/' 

The circumstances under which we are born 
and grow up have so much to do in moulding 
character and habits that it often happens that 
what the world sees of us contains only a frag- 
ment of our real selves. The powers which di- 
rect our footsteps are often so potent and so 
independent of our own design or intent that 
the lives we lead are extremely artificial. We 
instinctively imitate other people's manners 
and customs, we stumble over their mistakes 
and climb upon borrowed ladders, and too 
many lose their own individuality and live as a 
-passive atom amidst a conglomerate whole. 

At no time in human history, perhaps, were 
hindrances so numerous, seductive influences 
so subtle and man traps so broadcast and fas- 
cinating as now. So thickly strewn and so 
thoroughly organized are the besetments sur- 
rounding young men, that those who make a 
study of the subject cannot feel other than sur- 
prised that uprightness and morality prevail to 
the extent they do. 

A fair chance to live a useful, successful and 
peaceful life should be the common heritage of 

144 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

all. This chance is denied thousands of young 
men. It is made difficult for them to do right 
and easy to do wrong. They are exposed to 
influences — powerful and aggressive — which, 
from the beginning, conspire to lead them 
astray, thwart their success, impair their health, 
pervert their ideas, cripple their powers of rea- 
son, destroy their energy and ambition, mar 
their character, modify their sense of honor, de- 
stroy their lives and damn their souls. Inher- 
ited discrepancies, parental training, education, 
social customs, popular habits of life, and even 
much that apes religion, all more or less oper- 
ate against the best interests of recruiting gen- 
erations. 

It is a fact that too few are well born. A 
frowning protest, during these modern times, 
stands at the threshold of parenthood, and too 
many of our race come into the world unbid- 
den, unwanted and unblessed. When a child 
fails to receive the hallowed benediction of par- 
ental welcome and affection it is only half born. 
Young people marry who are criminally igno- 
rant of the laws which govern the marriage 
relation. ^^There is no place where wisdom is 
so much needed or ignorance so disastrous as 
just here; yet we do not even think of studying 
it; the whole subject is left in midnight dark- 
ness." 

Hereditary defects are accountable for much 

lo 145 



Manhood's Morning. 

of the evil we see about us. Inherited appetites 
and morbid passions prove a scourge among 
young men. There are many of the most de- 
basing traits of mind and character which, 
though inherited, He dormant until the hour 
when manhood begins to bloom, when, like 
hardy plants in a rich soil, they will grow and 
wax strong and crowd out all manly qualities 
and make ruin inevitable. Thousands of boys 
grow up, jfilling homes with joy and gladness 
and crowning parenthood with hopes and 
promise, only to find their manhood honey- 
combed by inherited sins, and their natures 
filled with passions and appetites which mow 
them down like grass. 

The predisposition to crime and vicious hab- 
its, the appetite for alcohol and tobacco, the de- 
sire for licentious indulgences, and the whole 
category of morbid traits and temperaments, 
are inherited just as naturally as the color of 
the hair or eyes or the shape of the head or 
foot. Both science and experience prove that 
these things are not accidents. 

Heredity closely follows inexorable laws, 
and the pivotal source between good and evil 
will never be understood until its laws are more 
closely studied ; and genuine reform will never 
succeed until the lessons which these laws teach 
are put into practical operation. The warp of 
no fabric is more uniform than the threads 

146 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

of kinship which run down through the gen- 
erations of mankind, from parent to child and 
to children's children, holding together, with 
consistent fidelity, the dominant peculiarities of 
body, mind and character. 

It is inherited discrepancies, more than all 
else, that fill our homes with sickness and sad- 
ness, our jails with criminals, our almshouses 
with paupers, our asylums and charitable insti- 
tutions with invalids, lunatics and imbeciles, 
and flood the country with vagabonds and 
tramps. Some years ago a reliable investigator 
(Mr. Dugdale, of the New York Prison As- 
sociation,) traced the history of a certain family 
through seven generations, and, ''Among 540 
direct descendants, and 169 persons related by 
marriage or co-habitation, there were 280 pau- 
pers and 140 criminals of the worst sort; guilty 
of seven murders, of theft, highway robbery 
and nearly every other offense known in the 
calendar of crime. The estimated cost to the 
State of this family of criminals, paupers and 
drunkards was $1,308,000.'* 

The celebrated John Cretien, with the taint 
of crime in his blood, was followed by three 
grandsons who committed murder, and nine 
great grandchildren, seven of whom died in 
prison. Of the remaining two, one was trans- 
ported for highway robbery and the other was 
hanged. It is estimated by competent and care- 

147 



, Manhood's Morning. 

ful observers that from fifty to eighty per cent, 
of crime and mental defects is due, in some 
way, to heredity. 

Immigration tends to * lower the standards 
of morality, and young men are the first to be- 
come influenced. While some of our best citi- 
zens have come to us from across the sea, yet a 
constant stream of degenerates swarm from 
other lands into America. It is an economic 
policy of Europe to send to our shores its moral 
and social debris. Nearly three-fourths of the 
discharged Irish convicts find their way to 
America. Immigration will not cease. Eu- 
rope could send us 2,000,000 emigrants annu- 
ally for a century and then increase her own al- 
ready overcrowded population. Official reports 
show that foreigners are three times as criminal 
in their natures, and that they are five times 
more apt to become paupers than American 
born citizens. 

Emigrants are composed largely of young 
men. They come in contact with American 
young men and the influence is vicious. The 
influence of the foreign element in creating a 
disrespect for religion, for law and order, and 
in corrupting politics is constant and powerful. 
The amalgamation between the races of the 
earth, constantly going on in America, has no 
parallel in human history. We are creating a 
new people. The English, Irish, German, 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

French, Italian, Russian, Swede and Spanish ; 
the Protestant, Catholic, Jew and nondescript, 
meet, commingle and marry, and out of the 
amalgam is developing a new race. The na- 
tions of the earth are forfeiting their identity 
upon American soil, and whether the reward 
will be a fateful sacrifice or a rich and blessed 
harvest the future alone can reveal. 

Legions of young men are without a home. 
There are in our nation two million young men 
practically homeless. They are traveling as 
salesmen, employes of railroads, steamboats, 
vessels, traveling shows and other enterprises, 
and as journeymen in all kinds of industry. 
There are 250,000 saloons in the nation, and 
from one to several young men can be found 
behind the bar of almost every one. All of 
these vocations require slavish devotion and 
long hours of service and most of them operate 
seven days in the week, giving no time for re- 
creation or mental development, and no chance 
to gain the elevating and moral influence of 
home life. Their bread and butter come 
through a continual plod. Day in and day out, 
with no relief, they sacrifice comfort, lose sleep 
and waste the best years of life in serving the 
exacting demands of organized and incorpor- 
ated greed and avarice. Their spare hours 
and surplus dollars are boldly sought by an 
endless variety of dissipations over which 

149 



Manhood's Morning. 

the devil holds almost an absolute monopoly. 

Not only are a vast multitude without a 
home, but the home training of as great a num- 
ber is the opposite of what it should be. A New 
York Supreme Court Judge a few years ago 
said : 'There is a large class of the population 
of New York and Brooklyn who just live, and 
to whom the rearing of two or more children 
means inevitably, a boy for the penitentiary 
and a girl for the brothel/' A conservative 
estimate places the number of boys in Chicago 
without a home, or with a home worse than 
none, at ten thousand. Other large cities fur- 
nish their quota. The influence of such a pros- 
titution of child-life, from every standpoint, is 
demoralizing beyond measure. A prominent 
Judge of Chicago says : ''Most of these boys 
will turn out to be thieves and criminals. Each 
one of them forms a nucleus for a history of 
crime.'' Thus do legions of boys grow into 
manhood without knowing anything but pov- 
erty and squalor, and caring for nothing but 
depravity and dissipation. 

Parents and well meaning people deplore the 
great temptations to which young men are ex- 
posed. Yet how few think to teach their boys 
to hate, and train them to overcome these 
things? They try to lubricate the pathway 
over which their sons must pass with a super- 
abundance of kindness and sympathy, and for- 

150 



Why Young Men Go Wrong, 

get that success, and usefulness, and virtue, and 
honor, and heaven and all other good things 
grow high and must be climbed after, and that 
the smoother the way is made the more apt 
young men are to slip and fall and miss the goal. 
The young should be taught to face and grap- 
ple with difficulties, as they are the stepping- 
stones to success ; to endure trials, as they are 
the rounds in the ladder to heaven. They must 
learn that self-confidence and unaided efiforts 
are necessary in climbing the rugged heights 
in life's highway. 

Young men are not properly appreciated. 
They are not given a fair chance. This is true 
in a hundred ways. Responsibilities and op- 
portunities unquestionably make men. When 
these things are withheld men fail to reach their 
full development in both body and mind. 

The first desire that enters the mind of a 
new-born babe, regarding life, is to be a man. 
Becoming such is entirely natural. Its con- 
summation is the highest achievement which 
finite conditions allow. It is a crime against 
humanity when any impedimicnt is permitted 
to abridge the perfecting of manhood. Yet 
how often do we see, on account of errors in 
training, men whose whole natures are dwarf- 
ed ; babies in pantaloons — petted, pampered and 
spoiled — wilful, cross and peevish — five and 
six feet tall^ — ten, twenty, thirty, forty years 

151 



Manhood's Morning. 

old — saucy, dirty mouthed and indolent. Such 
individuals, and every generation furnishes a 
crop, cannot be expected to do more than drift 
with the wind, tide and crowd, no matter in 
what direction they may be impelled. 

The old are not always friends to the young. 
It is a difficult thing for those who have grown 
old to be in full sympathy with, and heartily 
encourage, their juniors. The man who grace- 
fully welcomes his young rival with : ''You 
must increase, but I must decrease,'' shows a 
rare martyrdom. A frog has no regard for a 
tadpole, having ceased to be one himself, and 
most men are similarly constituted. Old men, 
as a rule, distrust the capabilities, opinions and 
methods of young men. 

But few children receive from their fathers 
the benefits of a wholesome discipline and 
training in ordinary business affairs. The 
wealth and wealth producing interests of 
America are, largely in the hands of men who 
have passed the prime of life. These men rep- 
resent the past rather than the present, or rap- 
idly unfolding future. It is too often the case 
that when a man dies, his children, for the first 
time, obtain an insight into the details of his 
business. Much of the inherited wealth, in 
consequence, proves an injury instead of a 
blessing. The eagle stirs her nest, bears her 
young upon her wings and teaches them to 

152 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

fly ; mother goose gives her gosHngs swimming 
lessons in the nearest puddle, but thousands 
of young men are required to enter upon their 
life's work, and fail and go astray, because 
selfish and jealous greed, and not the Golden 
Rule, has been their school-master. 

Multitudes of young men are led astray by 
evil companionships. Boys are taught profan- 
ity and vulgarity, taught to smoke and drink, 
taught personal defilement and licentiousness 
at a very early age. A blunt but most excellent 
man who spent his life among young men said : 
''The average boy of twelve is ruined." Thou- 
sands are dosed during infancy with soothing 
syrup, paregoric and other opiates and alcohol- 
ics, thus forever perverting their appetites. 
Vulgarity and obscenity circulate in the streets 
and among school children, and wherever boys 
and young men crowd together these things, as 
a rule, are freely indulged. Boys form bad 
habits and practice vice, indeed are often en- 
slaved, before they know that such things are 
injurious and wrong. 

Much of the literature of the present day is 
a curse to young men. Vulgarly illustrated 
periodicals and immoral fiction do incalculable 
harm. The great metropolitan daily newspa- 
pers keep up a constant panorama of crime, 
murder, conjugal lapses, prize fights and sen- 
sational exaggerations. The Sunday news- 

153 



Manhood's Morning. 

paper is the worst of all, and it is more read by 
young men than any week-day issue. The 
Sunday newspaper is the Church's worst en- 
emy. Many of those published seem to know 
no propriety except what the law demands. 
Such literature destroys the finer qualities of 
the mind, and creates morbid imaginations 
which almost inevitably lead to immoral habits. 

The New York Society for the Suppression 
of vice during a single year seized 63,139 
pounds of obscene books, 836,096 obscene pic- 
tures, 1,577,441 circulars, songs, etc., and 32,- 
883 papers, and arrested over 2,000 persons for 
being engaged therein. The names and ad- 
dresses of 1,102,620 persons were seized. Deal- 
ers in this class of literature use every means 
to get the names of boys and young men, and 
the business they do is tremendous. Says Mr. 
Anthony Comstock: ^^The degrading of the 
youth of this nation by the sickening details 
of loathsome crimes, the horrors of blood and 
thunder stories, the dime and half-dime novel 
and paper, and the foul oozings of defiled minds 
in many weekly papers, to say nothing of the 
nameless books and papers, is one of the high- 
est crimes that can be committed against the fu- 
ture of this nation. These brutal assaults upon 
the native innocence of youth and children are 
laying burdens upon the rising generation 
which will be grievous to the future." 

"A perpetual assault is made upon the cita- 

154 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

del of thought. Secret hours are spent dream-- 
ing over the story of vice and crime. The re- 
ceptive mind of youth drinks in sensational, 
foul and criminal story with an avidity that is 
fearful to contemplate. To those who have 
seen the results of these worse than sting of 
asps, no surprise is felt, when in after years is 
heard the moan of the aged person praying to 
be delivered from the sins of his youth.'' 

The millions of quack medicine pamphlets 
distributed by ^'Private Disease'' and ''Lost 
Manhood" charlatans, inflict upon the minds of 
young men an exceedingly vile impression. 
They often create imaginary diseases similar 
to those they are advertised to cure. There are 
many books written upon immoral subjects, os- 
tensibly to teach moral lessons, but most of 
them have been written simply to sell. Nearly 
all of them are to young men. Some of these 
books are most excellent but others are highly 
injurious. It is almost impossible to profitably 
moralize upon immoral subjects. 'Tt is only in 
exceptional natures that familiarity with vice 
increases the horror of it." It is impossible 
to build up a chaste and manly character by 
parading sensuality, even in pious language 
under sanctimonious headlines. Rot is rot, 
and it is never more rotten than when it is 
sandwiched between religious quotations and 
antiquated poetry. 

155 



Manhood's Morning. 

The discussion of the mysteries of sex, and 
of the transmission of Hfe are subjects which, 
though important and sacred, have polluted 
more minds than any other one thing. Knowl- 
edge of these matters comes to ninety-nine 
boys in a hundred clothed in language as low 
and vile as the most depraved carnality can 
conceive. It would seem that the entire sub- 
ject of sex and human biology has been handed 
over to the powers of evil to lead boys and 
young men astray. The influence of morbid 
teachings is blighting to the minds of the 
young and, in consequence, thousands are not 
allowed to indulge an unmolested chaste 
thought nor experience an untainted joy. 

Parents are criminally guilty in neglecting 
to instruct children regarding these matters. 
Every father and mother should take their 
children into their confidence, and at a proper 
age, reveal to them the mysteries of sex, and 
the physiological laws pertaining thereto. 
They should not wait until it is too late, but 
do it early. This would prevent morbid curi- 
osity, and give to a knowledge of these sub- 
jects the force of chastity and sacredness. I 
wish to here solemnly declare that if parents 
would intelligently and thoroughly do their 
duty regarding this matter a revolution in mor- 
als would ensue. When will boys and young 
men cease to learn of these things through 

156 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

channels which flow to destruction and in 
language that savors of the pit? 

One of the most hopeful developments of 
modern literature is the advent of books that 
impart proper knowledge to the young upon 
subjects pertaining to sex. Among the best of 
these for young men are, ''What a Young Boy 
Ought to Know", and ''What a Young Man 
Ought to Know'', and "What a Young Hus- 
band Ought to Know,'' all from the pen of Rev. 
Sylvanus Stall, D. D. These books are clean 
and instructive, free from insipid advice and 
should be read by every boy and young man. 

Modern business methods and the means of 
livelihood are becoming more and more antag- 
onistic to the success of new recruits. Those 
who are compelled to begin life without some 
special talent, a good supply of inherited 
wealth, or influential friends, are finding it ex- 
tremely difficult to gain a foothold within the 
threshold of success. That desirable goal called 
success in life is to be gained only by a few. 
As with political offices, there is not enough of 
any business or calling to go around. The 
great mass of young men must be doomed to 
disappointment. 

The road to success is literally crowded with 
giants, compared with whom average young 
men are as grasshoppers, and these kings and 
princes, monopolists and demagogues of trade 

157 



Manhood's Morning. 

are only too willing to deal vengeance upon any 
and all new accessions to their ranks. There may 
be **room on top" but the fellows who are al- 
ready there do not think so, and those who un- 
dertake to rival them in achievement are apt to 
find not only a vigorous but crushing opposi- 
tion awaiting them. One of the leading busi- 
ness men of America has said that ''real good 
chances, except to a very limited few, are a 
thing of the past." It is the inevitable fate of 
most young men to wrestle with poverty and 
misfortune as a life-long struggle. 

The fact that it is becoming more intensely 
difficult for men to earn an honest and respec- 
table living is a most potent source of evil. A 
young man cannot serve God, his fellow man, 
nor himself, unless he has useful employment 
for his hands and mind. When Christ was 
upon earth he always fed the hungry before 
he began to preach to them, but the practical 
side of His religion has been greatly neglected. 

There are, during seasons of business depres- 
sion, hundreds of thousands of young men in 
our land who are either unable to find work 
of any kind, or must accept such employment 
as exercises only the crude and primitive pow- 
ers of mind and muscle, leaving the talents 
and intellect indolent or idle. An enormous 
number of young men are little more than in- 
dustrial vagrants, unwillingly made so by vie- 

158 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

ious systems of industry over which they exer- 
cise no control. Eighty per cent, of those who 
go into business fail, not so much because there 
is no room, as from the fact that the room is 
monopolized by the favored few. Competition 
and rivalry have become so intense that new 
ventures find it not simply difficult, but im- 
possible to succeed. The veteran and the pro- 
fessional in any business or avocation know 
that only a few engaged therein can find a 
profitable basis. The great majority of those 
engaged in business must keep up a constant 
struggle to make ends meet. Thijs strain to 
gain a livelihood falls more heavily upon young 
men than any other class. They are the great- 
est losers in lapses of trade and industry. A 
pronounced season of business depression 
proves a tremendous force in demoralizing 
morals and character. At such times young 
men conceive warped ideas concerning honesty, 
politics, religion and morality. They at such 
times are surplus stock. They become pov- 
erty stricken and their ambition, industry and 
talents are a glut in the market. They be- 
come humiliated to beggary before the power of 
capital. They are veritable slaves, and must 
accept the crumbs that fall from the table of 
business. 'Tt is almost as depressing to beg for 
work as it is to beg for bread,'' and thousands 
of young men, the very cream of American 

159 



Manhood's Morning. 

manhood, are constantly hunting a job. Near- 
ly all young men begin life by seeking employ- 
ment. Pre-eminently they are the wage earn- 
ers of the nation. They are dependent upon 
others almost entirely, and in return have noth- 
ing to give but their services. Thomas Car- 
lyle said: ''A man willing to work and unable 
to find it, is perhaps the saddest sight that for- 
tune's inequality exhibits under the sun.'' 
Nothing is more crushing than enforced idle- 
ness, thwarted ambition and unavoidable pov- 
erty. 

Young men find every foot of land taken, 
owned and occupied; every business overrun, 
and every department of industry crowded to 
overflowing. And those who occupy and mo- 
nopolize the activities of the world are holding 
on, and grasping, saving and hoarding, and 
many of them denying themselves and living 
poor for the sake of dying rich. 

For every vacancy there are many applicants, 
and it is nothing unusual for several hundred 
young men to answer the same advertisement 
for help. This condition of affairs causes le- 
gions of young men to resort to questionable 
and compromising employment in order to se- 
cure clothing, food and shelter. It exposes 
them to a multitude of snares which they would 
otherwise escape. They abandon society ; they 
cease to go to church ; they avoid matrimony 

1 60 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

and become clandestine in habits, and, with 
morbid ideas of Hfe and of duty, they become 
permanently unstable and shiftless. 

Labor-saving machinery often operates 
against handicraft. New inventions are con- 
stantly supplanting labor. Improvements in 
labor-saving machinery render one man or boy 
capable of doing the work of two, twenty, and, 
in one or two instances, two hundred. The in- 
vention of the knitting machine affected fifty 
thousand people in England for two genera- 
tions. The invention of the cotton-gin revolu- 
tionized the labor of the South, as it does the 
work of a legion of hands. The reaper and 
binder, while it was a potent factor in develop- 
ing the West, proved a great annoyance to the 
working classes, thousands of whom depended 
upon the harvest fields as a source of employ- 
ment. 

With labor-saving machinery come new 
methods of doing business, the whole trend of 
w^hich is to dispense with labor. Everything is 
being done on a large scale. The old method 
of beginning in a small way and working to 
the front has become almost obsolete. A be- 
ginner cannot rival those who already occupy 
the field. It don't pay to do business any long- 
er on a small scale. A small manufacturer 
cannot make shoes, or cloth, or furniture for 
what a large manufacturer can afford to sell 



II 



i6i 



Manhood's Morning. 

these things. ''It costs seventy-five cents 
per bushel to grow wheat in a small way, but a 
large wheat grower can land it in the market 
at a cost of forty-five cents per bushel." When 
wheat sells for sixty cents per bushel, the large 
farmer makes fifteen cents per bushel, and his 
poor neighbor loses fifteen cents. The old es- 
tablished and gigantic business concern can 
buy goods for less money than the beginner, 
handle a large volume for what it costs to 
handle a small amount, sell for a less profit, 
secure advantages by having ready cash in 
abundance, secure better rates of transporta- 
tion, keep a larger and better variety and be 
more liberal in every way in accommodating 
customers. Indeed everything bows to the 
power of money, and the modern giants in the 
realms of manufacture and trade are bound to 
be monopolists w^hether they so desire or not. 
The concentration of wealth, as it exists in 
America at the present time, is an extremely 
discouraging condition to young men. There 
is a certain commendable pride and ambition 
forming an essential nucleus to every success- 
ful life, which if crushed, or destroyed, makes 
failure almost inevitable. When a young man 
stands at the threshold of his career and real- 
izes that the wealth of the nation is gleaned and 
garnered, that his life must be one continual 
plod, and that his only reward will simply be 

162 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

the ability to keep soul and body together, a 
tremendous conquest for evil is wrought unless 
his manhood contains far better metal than the 
average. 

I have said in a former chapter that the 
best thing that can come to a young man is to 
be thrown out into the world. This is true. 
Young men need such exercise to develop the 
powers of their manhood. As a rule they are 
better off if they start with nothing, but the 
chance to succeed must be kept open to them. 
It is only when poverty is a doom' that it is 
to be feared. When poverty becomes the in- 
evitable fate of young men they are no longer 
free, but slaves. That which we call liberty 
and freedom only exposes them to temptations 
and privileges which lead to ruin. 

The total valuation of the real and per- 
sonal property of the United States has in- 
creased enormously during the recent years and 
at present is not far from one hundred billion 
dollars. One hundred men own one-twentieth 
of this enormous sum. Forty thousand men own 
one-half of it. One million men own three- 
fourths of it. This means that seventy-five 
million of our people are worth about $25,000,- 
000,000, or only a little over $300 each. 

There are over 13,000,000 families in the na- 
tion and one-half of them are not worth $200 
each, or less than $40 for each individual. 

163 



Manhood's Morning. 

This means that one-half of our population — 
over 38,000,000 people — are not worth enough 
to keep them in food and clothing through a 
single winter. They are povert}^ stricken. 
These figures prove that a majority of the 
young men of the nation start out practically 
without a dollar. They have neither money, 
friends nor visible opportunity. They are, too 
many of them, tradeless, vmeducated and un- 
equal to meet the conditions required of them. 
They find themselves a drug in the labor mar- 
ket. Were they transformed into merchandise 
their money value would be shamefully small. 
Put up at auction, the average young man 
would not bring as much as a good horse. 
They in no way compare in money value with 
the slaves of the South forty years ago. The 
moral efifect of these conditions is withering, 
and blighting, and deplorable beyond concep- 
tion. 

There are hundreds of thousands of young 
men leading profligate and immoral lives be- 
cause an infamous system, embracing busi- 
ness, commerce, industry and finance denies 
them the opportunity of earning an honest and 
respectable living. They would become con- 
tributing and valuable citizens, faithful and lov- 
ing husbands and fathers ; they would establish 
homes, build houses and add wealth and char- 
acter to the nation were they given a chance. 

164 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

But the wealth of the nation and the power 
which it possesses have conspired against them. 
Capital makes its own laws and dictates its own 
terms. It demands all the profits and the un- 
conditional surrender of all its antagonists. 
The love of money and selfish greed have be- 
come master passions. Money makes monop- 
oly possible and monopoly is almost always 
mammon-wild and heartless, and when it is, 
those who serve it must cower at its feet and 
be unto its storehouse as beggars and unto its 
authority as common slaves. 

Another obstacle to the success of young 
men is the fact that during the past few years 
women have fairly swarmed into every depart- 
ment of human activity. They form, by far, 
the most formidable rival against which the 
young manhood of the nation is forced to con- 
tend. Women are the ''better half,'' not only 
in the home, but in the store, the factory, the 
counting room and even on the platform and in 
the literary sanctum. Much is written and said 
about the demoralizing effects of the cheap la- 
bor of foreigners ; the labor of women is more 
than simply cheap — it is cheap and it is good. 

There are at present, especially in cities, al- 
most as many women as men earning a liveli- 
hood. Many of them are doing what men 
should be doing. This condition gives to the 
idleness of young m.en a sad and hopeless phase. 

165 



Manhood's Morning. 

Nearly one-half of the money that passes over 
the counters of the legitimate business houses 
of our large cities and towns is handled by 
women. Man is hopelessly her inferior as a 
rival in clerical work and persistent service. 
Women are more economical, more attractive, 
quicker of perception, more accurate, rapid, 
industrious and loyal than men. Their eyes are 
keener, their brain clearer and their fingers 
more nimble, and they are instinctively more 
adroit. They can do more work, and better 
work, for less pay, than men, and in many po- 
sitions are much more acceptable. 

Man can never cope with woman as a rival. 
Women are more subordinate and have less 
selfish interests than men. They apply them- 
selves more closely to the work in hand, and, 
as a rule, are less meddlesome. They neither 
drink, smoke nor loaf, and they almost never 
prove dishonest. 

Women, as a rule, make a more thorough 
preparation for a chosen pursuit than do men. 
Technical colleges and training schools for 
women are rapidly on the increase, and girls 
by the legion, are preparing themselves for 
every possible legitimate vocation. Their ser- 
vices are being sought in preference to those 
of the sterner sex. Young men are in conse- 
quence being driven hither and thither and the 
moral effect is worthy of the most serious con- 
cern. , , 
1 66 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

Women are capturing some of the most de- 
sirable vocations almost en masse. Teaching, 
for instance, is rapidly passing into the hands 
of women. There are about 450,000 teachers 
in our nation, and already two-thirds of them 
are women. In Rhode Island, Massachusetts 
and New Jersey over 90 per cent, of teachers 
are women ; in New York 85 per cent. In the 
sectional schools of Philadelphia there are 
3,375 women teachers and only 216 men, and 
in New York City there are 19,013 women 
and only 1,411 men teachers. At the present 
rate of increase of the one and decrease of the 
other, unless a reaction occurs, male teachers 
will finally be a thing of the past. 

It is estimated that there are over 40,000 
type-writers and stenographers in New York 
City, and the great majority of them are wom- 
en. A parallel statement would apply to the 
entire nation. 

The increase of women wage-earners, from 
1880 to 1890, was remarkable and the number 
continues to rapidly grow. During the above 
ten years women musicians and music teachers 
increased from 5,753 to 34,519; artists and 
teachers of art, from 412 to 10,810; actresses, 
from 692 to 3,949 ; bookkeepers, clerks and 
copyists, from 8,011 to 92,825; journaHsts, 
from 35 to 888 ; physicians, from 527 to 4,555 ; 
lawyers, from 5 to 208, and clergywomen, from 

167 



Manhood's Morning. 

6"^ to 1,235. Not many years ago only a few 
occupations were open to women, now the field 
is practically theirs. 

Not only has woman established herself as an 
industrial and business factor, but she is being 
felt in politics. Law-makers are beginning to 
yield to her demands for recognition and jus- 
tice. ''Equal pay for equal services, regardless 
of sex,'' is finding its way into political plat- 
forms, and, in some States, women are begin- 
ning to vote. She is doing it so willingly and 
well — and remains a woman still — that it is only 
a question of time when all barriers to her high- 
est achievements and broadest activities will 
vanish. She will soon become a freeborn citi- 
zen and enjoy all its privileges. ''Woman's 
sphere" will cease to have a limit. Unless 
young men reform, and bestir themselves, and 
redeem their wonted dominion, and marry their 
rivals, they will find themselves supplanted and 
ostracised from the realm of progressive enter- 
prise. 

Politics does much to demoralize the nobler 
traits of young manhood. Next to religion, 
politics is the most sacred subject that men 
are called upon to consider, but it has become 
corrupt and debauched. A United States Sen- 
ator has said : "The Decalogue and the Golden 
Rule have no place in a political campaign." 
Men do in political matters themselves, and 

168 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

condone in others, what would be high crime 
in any other phase of action. The right to 
vote should awaken a profound sense of duty. 
But it does not. Politics has become the com- 
mon resort of unprincipled and selfish men. 
In no other realm are corrupt methods and sub- 
tle treachery so efifective. It furnishes a level 
where money and marketable manhood meet, 
and where fame and power can be bought with 
a price. 

"Strange dance ! 'Tis free to rank and Rags ; 

Here no distinction matters ; 

Here Riches shakes its money bags, 

And Poverty its tatters." 

It has been stated that no less than 85,000 
men have either directly or indirectly sold their 
votes at an election in New York City. In 
every locality the ^'floaters'' for sale completely 
handicap those who reverence and hold sacred 
the ballot box. Says a prominent American 
citizen : ''Bribery and political corruption have 
become a portentious evil menacing the very 
foundations of our free institutions.'' The in- 
timidation in politics is such that it requires al- 
most as much courage to withstand a political 
campaign, by voting as one pleases, as it did 
thirty years ago to shoulder a musket and enter 
the conflict for freedom. Statesmanship has 

169 



Manhood's Morning. 

degenerated into bossism, and patriotism into 
partyism. 

The realm of politics is so corrupt and un- 
savory that clean, self-respecting men are dis- 
posed to avoid it. Scheming demagogues have 
almost a monopoly fighting each other. It is 
too often the case that the more worthy and cir- 
cumspect a man is the less influence, politically, 
he has. About all the influence which con- 
science and convictions exercise at the ballot 
box is to act simply as a balance wheel to keep 
the whole machine from utter ruin. 

Nearly one million young men arrive at their 
majority each year, and at each presidential 
election over three million vote for the first 
time. More than any other class, they are 
sought, importuned, coaxed, deceived, lied to, 
elbowed, bribed and bulldozed. 

Thus schooled, young men conclude that pol- 
itics is a prize game ; that popular government 
is a farce and that all there is in it is what can 
be got out of it. Thousands dismiss the prin- 
ciples involved from their minds entirely, and 
become as straws, leaning toward that party 
which makes the biggest display and which has 
the best prospects of success. 

The church and other organized religious 
forces fail in their duty toward young men. 
The fact that young men are not being brought 
into the church and under moral influences is 

170 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

apparent everywhere. In many places the 
church is almost a complete failure. Yet re- 
ligious people are in earnest. Never was the 
church more active than now. In every de- 
partment of Christian work a special effort has 
been made to reach young men. To none has 
philanthropy been more liberal, for none have 
prayers been more fervent. The results have 
not, however, been encouraging. 

When we remember that most of the solid 
character and moral worth, with which society 
is blessed, is inherited rather than acquired; 
when we learn how few — extremely few — 
young men who start wrong ever reform and 
become earnest, useful Christians, we must ad- 
mit that the influence of religious organizations 
is deplorably slight. Religion of the convicting 
quality and converting quantity seems to be 
wanting. We sing ''Ninety and Nine" to one 
sheep, while the ''ninety and nine'' are out ''on 
the desert bare.'' There is a great lack of prac- 
tical force and spiritual power somewhere. 

The work of religion is greater than the 
work of science, of education or of culture, 
greater than reforms or revolutions, than poli- 
tics or political parties, than the pen or the 
press. Its work is greater than all of these 
things together. Its mission is to uplift and 
save the world. 

Religious institutions have become too much 

171 



Manhood's Morning. 

engrossed in their own internal affairs. They 
dress parade, but seldom fight. They try to 
resave the saved rather than the lost ; to make 
people believe exactly rather than trust implic- 
itly. They spend their energy in the endeavor 
to make the good better and the better perfect ; 
in salting the salt ; in directing the way to their 
own pilgrims, leaving the lost sheep, for whom 
Christ died, to shift for themselves. The el- 
der brother, the upright son, who has saved his 
money and who pays high pew rent, is feasted 
upon fatted calf, while the unfortunate prodi- 
gal is allowed to feed upon husks and spiritu- 
ally starve. 

There are several million young men in 
America who never hear the gospel preached. 
What little they learn of the subject of religion 
is gained by coming in contact with professing 
Christians. What they see and hear is so com- 
monplace and disappointing that they relieve 
their minds of the subject entirely. When re- 
ligion ceases to be aggressive, enthusiastic and 
in living earnest, young men, at least, forget 
that it has any special claims upon them. 

Many good people imagine that pure, genu- 
ine, unadulterated gospel truth is not just the 
thing for young men, and a tremendous efifort 
is made to make religion attractive, entertain- 
ing and even amusing in order to attract them. 
Addresses and religious meetings for young 

172 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

men are expected to possess at least three fea- 
tures, — they must be ''spicy, entertaining and 
short/' When young men become Christians 
they are too often made into hothouse plants 
instead of shining lights ; they are burdened 
with advice instead of work; they are not ac- 
cepted as soundly converted until they have 
been well trained in the doctrines of some par- 
ticular creed. 

As a rule young men have planted, deep 
within them, an exalted reverence for sacred 
and religious things. They need nothing sa 
much as gospel truth and Christian consis- 
tency among those with whom they do business 
and associate. They should come in contact 
with these things, not simply on Sunday, but 
seven days in the week. 

During recent years there has been a well- 
marked tendency for mankind to divide into 
widely separated classes. Evil always follows 
such a condition. Not only have wealth and 
avarice become organized, but selfishness and 
pride, as well. The rich and the poor, the 
strong and the weak, the fortunate and the un- 
fortunate, the learned and the ignorant are in- 
clined to stand apart and grow more exclusive* 
These conditions make vividly conspicuous 
everywhere man's inhumanity to man. A war- 
fare, constant and relentless, exists, in some 
form, between these extremes. The fortunate 

173 



Manhood's Morning. 

preach contentment to the unfortunate, and the 
less favored preach the Golden Rule in return, 
and both detest the precepts of the other. Class 
distinction, wrought out of human experiences^ 
has been the curse of civilization. It is the ap- 
parent doom of Europe to-day. It is the un- 
derlying basis of most of the struggles in our 
own land. 

''O ! Why should the strong oppress the weak 

Till the latter goes to the wall? 
On this earth of ours, with its thorns and flowers, 

There is room enough for all." 

The lines of conflict between the high and 
the low constantly grow more apparent. Should 
we discover that such conditions are compati- 
ble wuth the spirit of liberty, it would only 
prove that our boasted liberty is a misnomer. 

Widely separated class distinctions, in any 
phase of life, are to be deplored, because such 
conditions always handicap genuine progress. 
Mankind is a common brotherhood, and condi- 
tions and systems which bring all classes of 
people together in harmony must prevail. Sci- 
ence, Education and Social Agencies have be- 
come active factors in the world's progress. 
New conditions confront us. A new era of 
progress is close at hand. Superficial and nar- 
row views are no longer effective. The best 
welfare of all, and not selfish factions — too 
long the American octopus — must prevail. 

174 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

Scientific workers were never so closely al- 
lied to progress, health and happiness as at 
present. That man is his brother's keeper 
has become a scientific fact. Scientists have 
become the kings of earth. Knowledge of 
health, sanitary matters, hygiene and thou- 
sands of other economic branches, are forcing 
a new era. Science is proving that vice is an 
organic disease, reaching back into ancestry 
and permeating society at large. Education has 
told us that crime and vice are the work of 
criminals and vicious men; but science will 
prove that criminals and vicious men are the 
result of crime and vice. 

Education has neglected the moral develop- 
ment of boys and young men. Educational 
methods and ideas should be the most progres- 
sive of all, yet the longest and narrowest and 
deepest ruts in history have been made by edu- 
cators. For four centuries Education has been 
straining the memory, instead of training the 
mind and will ; burdening the brain with anti- 
quated data, instead of developing it into its 
highest possibilities. 

The great teacher, Froebel, illustrated a 
moral as well as intellectual principle when he 
said : ''All that does not grow out of one's inner 
being oppresses and defaces the individuality 
of man ; instead of developing nature it makes 
it a caricature." Shall we never cease to stamp 



Manhood's Morning. 

human nature, even in childhood, as we do 
coins, instead of aiding it to develop itself ac- 
cording to the natural laws of life? 

Social influences lead multitudes of young 
men astray. The social faculty is perhaps the 
strongest power that actuates life. Society 
is the union of all opinions, motives, habits and 
desires, and its force is irresistible. The kings 
and princes of society rule the world. Wher- 
ever they go mankind is sure to follow. The 
social realm stands next to religion in import- 
ance. It is the duty of organized society to 
destroy the evil influences of the theatre, the 
ballroom, the club, the billiard and pool room, 
the saloon and the immoral resort. Future 
history must be chiefly social. 

The general drift of fashionable life is to- 
ward a compromise of morals. That high rev- 
erence for chastity and virtue, which is the only 
safe standard, is being constantly assailed. 
There is no large city, and few large towns, 
where nightfall does not open clandestine re- 
sorts where boys and young men are made wel- 
come and ruined. These places touch the so- 
cial side of young men and capture them whole- 
sale. A prominent educator says : ''More boys 
and young men are ruined by questionable so- 
cial retreats in our cities than by the saloons.'' 
The teacher of a class of young men in a city 
Sunday School, sometime since, discovered 

176 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

that one of her scholars was visiting some low 
dens of iniquity. She decided to investigate 
the habits of her entire class and found that 
every one was doing the very same thing. 
Were the truth unearthed, many other teachers 
would be equally surprised. That such influ- 
ences live and thrive and multiply and grow 
mere alluring, more active and desperate, 
should not mark the progress of civilization. 
That the socially gifted do so little to counter- 
act such influences by wholesome, elevating 
recreation, shows a serious flaw in our social 
system. 

Legions of young men go wrong because it 
is so easy. They are ruined because the way 
is so short. It takes very little to wreck a life. 
^The worst man is seven-eighths exactly like 
the best man.'' A disease of one organ sickens 
the whole body, and a flaw at some vital point 
of the moral economy is ruin. The worst ras- 
cal, rogue, or reprobate is often the best and 
brightest man warped or weak at some vital 
spot. The difference between the criminal and 
the judge, the prisoner and the jailor, may be 
extremely slight. The dividing line is crossed 
by thousands unconsciously. Vices are too 
strong to be broken before they are great 
enough to be seen. ^Tt is only three steps to 
ruin.'' The first step is subtle and short. It 
is simply a change of ideals, a slight deflection 

177 



Manhood's Morning. 

of the vision, a revelry of the imagination, a 
trivial turn of the footsteps. Drummond says : 
'^When we see a man fall from the top of a 
five story building we know death is sure be- 
fore he falls a foot/' The same law applies 
to the moral nature. When a young man al- 
lows his energies to cool, and he yawns and 
drawlingly says, ''Oh, well, life leads to noth- 
ing worth striving after," he has taken the first 
step to ruin; he has lost his grip upon his 
highest possibilities. Nine-tenths of the lost 
were ruined just at this point. 

When it is remembered that all evil influ- 
ences w^ork together in absolute harmony, that 
in their union their strength is multiplied, 
then, and then only, is their power appreciated. 
The forbidden fruits of the modern Eden are of 
endless variety. No taste, fancy or desire is 
allowed to remain unsatisfied. Temptations 
were never so abundant, never so subtle, never 
so powerful as now, and perhaps young men 
wxre never so poorly equipped to withstand 
them. By inheritance, by birth, by education 
and by experience the young men of America 
are morally weak. They are, to a deplorable 
degree, willing prey. While this is true there 
was never such a determined and persistent 
effort to ensnare them. More than ever be- 
fore capital is invested, energy enlisted, and 
business ability arrayed in schemes and enter- 

178 



Why Young Men Go Wrong. 

prises to allure and ruin them. Young men 
have become a necessity — a staple commodity 
— in the markets of sin. Satan has a money 
interest in them. In the conflict between right 
and wrong for the character and souls of young 
men, wrong occupies the vantage-ground. To 
the interests of wrong they are a source of 
profit ; to the cause of right, they are too often 
an expense. Wrong panders to their appetites 
and passions, while right demands their self- 
denial and forbearance ; wrong is satisfied with 
indolence and extravagance, while right de- 
mands industry and economy ; wrong is pleased 
with ignorance, while right insists upon knowl- 
edge ; wrong gives what is wanted, right allows 
only what is needed; wrong can thrive upon 
weaknesses, while right depends upon strength ; 
wrong accepts young men as they are, shows 
them the world and the glories thereof, and 
says : '^All these things will I give thee,'' while 
right demands a clean heart and a new crea- 
ture; wrong gives freedom and license, right 
enforces law and imposes duty ; wrong is will- 
ing to deceive, cheat, beguile, mislead, lie, gull, 
tickle, please, promise everything, or grant any- 
thing, while right is honest, truthful and just; 
wrong is reached by a thousand paths, right is 
reached by only one. 

While evils are legion and working in har- 
mony day and night, seven days in the week, 

179 



Manhood's Morning. 

the forces in the cause of right are confused 
by divisions and frustrated through lack of 
zeal and courage. Throughout the entire realm 
of human influences are found causes, powerful 
and persistent, which impel young men to ruin. 
The pathways downward fairly bewilder with 
music that enamors and with excitement that 
enchants. Subtle enticements and seductive 
charms, mantraps, soothing wiseacres, artful 
wiles, wolves in sheep's clothing, blind and 
perverse teachers, deceptive by-ways, false be- 
liefs, perambulating, devouring demons, intimi- 
dating and tyrannical powers flourish, fascinate 
and hold dominion upon every side. While 
the young men of America, thoughtless and 
credulous, become willing victims of these be- 
guiling influences, those who are fortunate 
enough to escape too often stand aside and view 
the havoc wrought with complaisant supine- 
ness, too self-righteous to feel implicated and 
too selfish and cowardly to lend a helping hand. 



1 80 



CHAPTER VI. 
Paying the Piper. 



Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be 
burned ? Solomon, 

"He cannot plead, his throat is choked, 
Sin holds him in her might; 
And self-condemned, he slideth down 
To an eternal night." 

*' Those who dance must pay the piper," 

I doubt whether the ferocity of the battlefield is as* 
merciless as is the remorseless onslaught of unscru- 
pulous passion. Julia Ward Howe. 

Secret sins and kindred vices yearly ruin more con- 
stitutions than hard work, severe study, hunger, cold, 
privation and disease combined. 

/. H. Kellogg, M. D. 

Man is first startled by sin ; then it becomes pleas- 
ing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then 
habitual, then confirmed. Then man is impenitent, 
then obstinate, then he is damned. — Jeremy Taylor. 

Do we not all know what it is to be punished by 
Nature for disobeying her? We have looked round 
the wards of a hospital, a prison, or a madhouse, and 
seen there Nature at work squaring her accounts with 
sin. Henry Drummond. 

"What havoc hast thou made, foul monster, sin? 

In the great majority of things, habit is a greater 
plague than ever afiflicted Egypt. John Foster. 



182 



CHAPTER VI. 



PAYING THE PIPER. 



THE forces which have been shaping 
the history of our nation during re- 
cent years have made but Httle 
noise. The destroying elements in 
our midst have been wont to operate in se- 
clusion and in silence. Waving harvest fields, 
laden with abundance, have made beautiful 
the face of our land, and the engrossing activi- 
ties of manufacture and commerce are seen 
upon every side. We have been filled with the 
comforting thought that America is an invul- 
nerable embodiment of peace, prosperity and 
power. 

A nation, however, does not consist simplv 
of an extensive wealth producing territory and 
a multiplying number of people. It is the in- 
telligence, the industry, the character and the 
morals of individuals that decide the stability 
and insure the permanency of a nation. 

The evil habits, vice, and immoralities which 
prevail to such an extent among young men 
cannot exist without a corresponding evil and 

183 



Manhood's Morning. 

destructive influence upon the happiness and 
welfare of the people. 

Only to the smallest degree is it possible to 
know how injurious and destructive to happi- 
ness, success and life are the evil habits to 
which so vast a multitude are addicted. Peo- 
ple generally are imbued with the imptession 
that at a certain age it is to be expected that 
young men will sow a crop of wild oats, and 
that in due season they will return to rectitude 
and no harm come from it. Men and women 
cry aloud against every other form of vicious- 
ness, except those sins which belong especially 
to young men. Regarding these a strange si- 
lence prevails. A peculiar and voluntary char- 
ity shields this unsavory realm of iniquity, and 
it is allowed to strut through the land blight- 
ing, killing and damning — a perpetual devas- 
tating carnage — and yet, aside from the curse 
of strong drink, we hear but little of the sub- 
ject. 

I feel fully certain that questions relative to 
intemperance, vice and immorality belong al- 
most exclusively to young men. Justice de- 
mands that my position be made plain at this 
point. I have maintained that the period of 
young manhood is dififerent from that which 
follows. In nothing is the difference so 
strongly marked as in the matter of habit. 
Men who have growm old in habit will not, 

184 



Paying the Piper. 

as a rule, ever change. There are, for illustra- 
tion, thousands of excellent Christian men us- 
ing tobacco. Its use with them has become al- 
most organic. These men have my sympathy, 
not my censure. Most of them deplore their 
habit but it holds them in bondage. My father 
was an inveterate tobacco user, but if he 
caught either of his three boys using it, the rod 
well applied, was the penalty. The fact that I 
do not use it is to his credit; the fact that I 
hate its use is a natural inheritance. Perhaps 
it was not wrong for him to use it, but it 
would be wicked for me to do so. There are 
multitudes of men, noble Christian men, who 
have grown old in the habit. They will never 
abandon the habit, perhaps it never has and 
never will become a matter of right and 
wrong with them ; but for young men to imi- 
tate them is entirely different. The light, the 
science, the Christianity, and the needs of this 
new age pronounce these things injurious and 
wrong, and to become victims to them is sin. 

We are told that 'The wages of sin is death.'' 
When death and the conditions which lead to it 
are seen upon every side, searching for the 
cause becomes a paramount duty. It is claim- 
ed, by competent observers, that the American 
people are not living more than two-thirds 
as long as they should. This means that on an 
average more than fifteen years are cut off from 

185 



Manhood's Morning. 

each human Hfe. Man can no longer afford to 
Hve in either ignorance or error. If advantages 
He hidden before him, it is a duty to grapple for 
them; if pitfalls bestride his pathway, it is 
wicked to blindly fall therein. 

The time has come when timid, cowardly 
language should cease, and when young men 
should be told the truth regarding vice and de- 
stroying habits. Wherever there lives the soul 
of a patriot, there should be found a fearless 
champion of a cleaner, purer manhood. From 
one border of our nation to the other an aggres- 
sive and relentless warfare should be waged 
until a clearer and more wholesome moral at- 
mosphere prevails among the young manhood 
of the nation. 

Irreverence, disrespect, vulgarity, obscenity, 
the use of tobacco, intemperance, immorality, 
personal defilement, licentiousness, gambling 
and profligacy are in their very nature far- 
reaching and destroying. All of these evils are 
associated and work together, and thus united, 
they form the gigantic and devastating curse 
of the age. War, pestilence and famine com- 
bined sink into insignificance when compared 
with the evil habits and wicked practices of 
young men. They are direct and powerful 
destroyers of the race, and wherever they pre- 
vail manhood becomes impaired in both body 
and mind, and depraved in motive power and 

1 86 



Paying the Piper. 

will. Vice, like misery, seeks companionships, 
and when it gains a foothold in one form it 
never rests until every morbid appetite and evil 
desire have wrought their deadly work. 

Profanity and vulgarity are twins. As a 
rule, they are the first-born among the vices. 
There may be men who are victims of these 
habits and yet maintain a high degree of moral 
integrity, but they are few. The influence of 
either is vile and dastardly. They are the first 
lessons taught in the devil's school, and to thou- 
sands they are the first steps on the road to per- 
dition. They are Satan's gift cards and cost 
neither money, thought nor efifort. To the vic- 
tim they bring neither pleasure, satisfaction 
nor profit. Why men are profane and vulgar 
is as astounding as it is incomprehensible. That 
so many young men indulge in these habits only 
proves that they are so filled with the spirit of 
sacrifice that they are willing to work for the 
devil without pay sooner than be idle. 

Nothing is more universally condemned than 
these two vices. They not only pollute the in- 
tellect, but the character and life. They rap- 
idly become fixed habits, and are among the 
most difficult to overcome. They corrupt the 
imagination and more young men are ruined 
from evil imaginations than from passion. Na- 
poleon said : ''Imagination rules the world,'' 
and surely it moulds the individual character. 

187 



Manhood's Morning. 

These habits breed coarseness and bad man- 
ners; they destroy the finer sensibiHties ; they 
turn chivalry into cowardice, and transform 
clean noble-hearted men into scandal-peddlers 
and virtue-pirates. Vulgarity is an unfailing 
sign of a depraved conscience, and profanity of 
a guilty one. Chaste and refined language never 
mix, and seldom alternate with debasing 
speech, and from such elevating thoughts stand 
aloof. These vices quickly rob young men of 
self-respect ; God is driven from the heart, and 
the door opened for all manner of evils. Those 
so addicted cease to go to church, sneak out of 
the Sunday-school and sheepishly avoid every 
approach of refinement and virtue. Vulgarity 
is the passport to the brothel as profanity is to 
the saloon. Vulgarity leads young men by the 
legion into self-defilement and licentiousness, 
and profanity mocks and stifles their remorse. 
The vulgar and profane man is more than half 
ruined, and the remainder of the way is the 
devil's play-ground. Profanity and vulgarity 
form the hot-bed in which revel not only sensu- 
ous desires but wanton practices. They coil 
their slimy forms about the purity of woman- 
hood and the virtue of manhood, and drag 
them into the pit of carnal indulgence, the end 
of which is disgrace and hell. A young man 
saturated with vulgarity and profanity breeds 
more contagion than if he had the small-pox. 

1 88 



Paying the Piper. 

He will contamniate and infest an entire neigh- 
borhood in an incredibly short time. One such 
young man will do more damage than a dozen 
topers or a score of thieves. That these two 
vices have become fixed habits in our national 
life is one of the nation's most lamentable mis- 
fortunes. 

The evil eifects of tobacco are deep-seated 
and sure. Especially is this true when it is 
used by the young. The strength and useful- 
ness of young men depend upon the full and 
perfect development of their physical, intellect- 
ual and moral natures. Nothing interferes 
with this more surely than the use of tobacco. 
Like all narcotics, its use has a deadening effect 
upon the moral sense, especially in young per- 
sons. Among all the evil habits to which Chris- 
tian nations are addicted the use of tobacco in 
its direful effects surely takes a front rank. 
Liquor is the only agent that equals it and this 
might be seriously questioned. From much 
observation and careful study of the subject, 
my own opinion is that tobacco is one of the 
greatest enemies to the human race in the 
world, at the present time. The subtleness of its 
charm, the insidiousness of its action, the al- 
most universal manner in which it is used and 
the deep-seated and lasting effects which surely 
follow its use, have no parallel regarding any 
other agent, in human history. 

189 



Manhood's Morning. 

The use of tobacco clogs the intellect, shat- 
ters the nerves, lessens the ambition, saps the 
brain, interferes with bodily development and 
the mental vigor of all growing boys. It tends 
to create a thirst for strong drink, and its ex- 
cessive use has been known to cause nervous 
dyspepsia, heart disease, sore throat, cancer of 
the mouth, throat and stomach, nasal catarrh, 
insanity and imbecility, and to sap the foun- 
dations of manliness and virtue. Nothing 
will so surely destroy the sense of honor 
and make liars and thieves of boys and young 
men as the use of tobacco. The record of 
a certain court shows that out of 700 convicts, 
600 were there for crimes committed under the 
influence of liquor, and 500, of the 600, testified 
that the use of tobacco brought them to the 
drink habit. In France its use is prohibited in 
military schools. Observations made at Har- 
vard, Yale and Princeton Colleges prove con- 
clusively that no student who uses tobacco is 
ever at his best, physically or mentally. 

I have never known but one physician of 
prominence to publicly recommend the use of 
tobacco, and he has spent two years of his life 
in an asylum on account of dissipation. Hon. 
Cornelius Walford, author of the Insurance Cy- 
clopcudia, one of the world's best authorities, 
says : ^T believe tobacco to be a more insidious 
stimulant than alcoholic beverages. It can be 

190 



Paying the Piper. 

indulged in more constantly without visible de- 
gradation ; but surely it saps the powers of the 
mind. Until mankind can rise above beer and 
tobacco, the race will remain degraded as it 
now is, mentally, socially and physically/' 
Says the eminent Dr. Willard Parker: ''To- 
bacco is ruinous in our schools and colleges, 
dwarfing both mind and body. Tobacco is do- 
ing more harm in the world than rum. It is 
destroying the race." Prof. Spencer, of The 
Spencerian Business College, who has had un- 
der him over 50,000 scholars, says that the ef- 
fects of tobacco are ''premature age, shattered 
nerves, mental weakness, stunted growth and 
general physical and moral degeneracy.'' Says 
Prof. Mead, of Oberlin College : "The tobacco 
habit tends to deaden the sense of honor/' Dr. 
Stowell, author of Essentials of Health, says : 
"Deceit seems to be a born companion of the 
boy and his cigarette. Boys who would not be 
guilty of telling a falsehood on other matters, 
soon find it easy to lie about this habit." At a 
meeting of the leading physicians of Philadel- 
phia it was declared that "Cigarette smoking is 
one of the vilest and most destructive evils that 
ever befell the youth of any country ; its direct 
tendency is to a deterioration of the race." Dr. 
W. Seaver, of Yale College, who has made 
careful and extended observations, says: "No 
young man can use tobacco without injuring 

191 



Manhood's Morning. 

himself seriously/' Dr. A. Arthur Reade, in 
his Symposium, Study and Stimulants, says : 
''It is truly remarkable that out of twenty men 
of Science only two smoke, one of whom, Prof. 
Huxley, did not commence until forty years of 
age.'' Regarding its use by young men he 
adds : ''To them it is bad in any form. It poi- 
sons their blood, it stunts their growth, weak- 
ens the mind and makes them lazy." The emi- 
nent author, J. D. Steele, Ph. D., says: "The 
young man w^ho uses tobacco deliberately di- 
minishes the possible energy with which he 
might commence the w^ork of life." The testi- 
mony of Prof. J. A. Kellogg is : "The results 
of no vice are more certainly transmitted to pos- 
terity;" and that, "the children of such men 
are robbed of their rightful patrimony and enter 
upon life with a weakly vital organism, with a 
system predisposed to disease and destined to 
premature decay." The evidence of Thomas 
Jeflferson is : "The culture of tobacco is pro- 
ductive of infinite wretchedness." 

The American Indians, though in some re- 
spects favored, are, and for centuries have been, 
a savage race. They are without self-respect, 
ambition, or power to appreciate civilization. 
They are cold-hearted, revengeful and possess- 
ed of an uncontrollable appetite for whiskey. 
As a cause for their peculiar and apparent 
hopeless condition, tobacco stands almost alone. 

192 



Paying the Piper. 

Indeed its use has been their one great vice. 

Hundreds of women die every year, and 
thousands become nervous wrecks through 
sleeping with tobacco-saturated husbands. In 
no instance are the sins of the fathers more 
surely visited upon the children than in tobacco 
using. It produces in the offspring an ener- 
vated and unsound constitution which lessens 
the physical resistance and invites disease and 
death. It not only leads young men to the drink 
habit but holds them there. Signing the tem- 
perance pledge, in almost every case, proves a 
failure unless tobacco is included in the re- 
form. 

In thousands of cases where liquor is re- 
corded, in newspapers and courts of justice, as 
the cause of crime, tobacco, and not alcohol, 
is really the guilty substance. In many cases it 
is doubly guilty — it leads to the drink habit 
and then makes the drunkard criminally des- 
perate. My observation leads me to believe 
that the tobacco habit is more difficult to aban- 
don than the liquor habit. 

The fact that a few men use tobacco with- 
out apparent injury is no argument in its favor. 
Some men are invulnerable. They are not im- 
pressionable. They can go among small-pox 
or cholera; they can live amidst malaria or 
contagion with impunity. Their power of re- 
sistance is perfect ; but such men are few. They 



Manhood's Morning. 

belong to the frugal, solid stock of the past, 
rather than to the active, nervous temperaments 
of the present generation. 

The effects of Intemperance are constant and 
terrible. A conservative estimate of the annual 
number of d^ths caused by intemperance in 
our nation is at least one hundred thousand. 
The majority of this vast army are young men. 
They represent the noblest, brightest, most 
lovable and promising of our manhood. It is 
nothing less than murder, wholesale, public and 
deliberate. 

The use of alcoholic liquors causes a long 
list of diseases and morbid conditions which 
not only destroy life but cause untold misery 
among the people. Their use greatly lessens 
physical resistance. Those who drink stand 
surgical diseases badly. Such diseases as ty- 
phoid fever, pneumonia, consumption, rheuma- 
tism, dysentery and other debilitating maladies 
prove a scourge among the intemperate. 

The use of alcoholic liquors directly causes 
apoplexy, paralysis, vertigo, both hardening 
and softening of the brain, delirium tremens, 
dementia, insanity, consumption, congestion of 
the lungs, fatty degeneration, nervous and val- 
vular diseases of the heart, diseases of the 
blood, dyspepsia, catarrh and ulceration of the 
stomach and bowels, congestive sclerosis or 
hardening of the liver, diabetes and Bright's 
disease. 

194 



Paying the Piper. 

Not only does it cause organic disease in 
every organ of the body, but it enormously in- 
creases the death rate among those who seem to 
escape visible evil results from its use. It not 
only kills openly and boldly, but gradually and 
secretly. The death rate among those exposed 
to the temptation to drink, while at their daily 
work, is more than twice as great as among 
those not so exposed. The death rate among 
temperate young men between the ages of four- 
teen and twenty-eight is not over six to ten per 
looo, while among those addicted to drink it 
reaches from fifteen to thirty per lOOO. There- 
fore, if one-half of the young men of America 
drink, it means that over 90,000 young men 
fall, every year, victims of the drink habit. The 
death rate among bar tenders is three times as 
great as among those engaged in agricultural 
pursuits. Those who have studied the subject 
claim that from eight to ten per cent, of the 
deaths occurring among men is due to the use 
of liquor. 

It might be questioned, however, whether 
or not death is the worst result of intemper- 
ance. It is often, apparently, a greater curse 
to the living than to those whom it destroys. 
To none does it prove so great an evil as to 
young men. No drinking young man can at- 
tain to his best, either in body, mind or will. In 
becoming slaves to the habit young men forfeit 

195 



Manhood's Morning. 

self-respect and the confidence of others. No 
matter what may be a young man's attainments, 
abiHties or ambition if his reputation must be 
labeled, ''but he drinks,'' the chances are all 
arrayed against him. Those who are intemper- 
ate are tactitly branded, not by law, but by so- 
ciety, by opportunity and by business enter- 
prise. Nothing so destroys the higher possi- 
bilities of young men. It forces them into lives 
of menial drudgery, disgrace and poverty. 
Nothing so thoroughly destroys their useful- 
ness, or so quickly carries them beyond the 
realm of opportunity and possible success. The 
effects of alcohol upon the mind are ruinous. 
It perverts and weakens the memory, it sours 
the disposition, it arouses jealousy and sus- 
picion and inflames the temper ; it drives out the 
man and enthrones the brute and the beast. The 
young man who drinks becomes, in part, at 
least, a moral imbecile, and is never to be 
trusted. Such persons voluntarily ostracise 
themselves from elevating society and from de- 
sirable and ennobling avocations, and by being 
individually demoralized, they seek positions 
beneath where they would otherwise belong, 
and thus betray and embarrass the whole scope 
of enterprise and labor. 

Personal and Social impurity is a formidable 
scourge, God intended that the bodies of 
young men should be clean, and that their lives 

196 



Paying the Piper. 

should be pure, and there are no sins upon 
which He looks with more disfavor than upon 
personal defilement and licentiousness. 

Secret sin is the greatest curse of blossoming 
manhood. It takes the glow from the cheek, 
the brightness from the eye and the life-blood 
from the veins. Nothing so destroys the will- 
power and vital energy. Under its influence 
the habits become slovenly, the appetites mor- 
bid and perverted, the muscles flabby and weak, 
the disposition insipid, the spirits melancholic 
and the whole demeanor sheepish, reclusive and 
embarrassed. It weakens the intellect and im- 
pairs the memory ; the blood becomes thin and 
chilled and the countenance expressionless, be- 
traying a guilty conscience and a depraved 
mind. It takes the native skill from the hand 
and the appreciation of the beautiful from the 
mind. Such young men lose personal magnet- 
ism and attractiveness, society ceases to appre- 
ciate them, and they avoid refined and elevating 
companionships. Thus isolated they become 
willing and helpless victims to every form of 
vice. The habit leads to insanity, melancholy, 
sterility and general decay. It is thorough in 
its work, and finally destroys every faculty and 
every virtue which adorns and makes attrac- 
tive, forceful and noble the estate of manhood. 
Says a famous writer: ''Once the habit is 
formed, and the mind has positively suffered 

197 



Manhood's Morning. 

from it, there would be almost as much hope 
of the Ethiopian changing his skin, or the leop- 
ard his spots, as the victim abandoning his 
vice. The sooner he sinks to his degraded rest, 
the better for himself and the Vv^orld/' 

The evil effects of licentiousness are con- 
stant and sure. The devil palms off wanton in- 
dulgence as the very essence of worldly pleas- 
ure, and too many young men, allured by the 
cruel deception, waste their substance following 
strange women. They ''go straightway as an 
ox goeth to the slaughter'' only to ''mourn at 
the last when their flesh and their bodies are 
consumed.'' 

When a young man gains a carnal knowledge 
of a woman he surely ignites the flames of an 
earthly hell. No matter whether it be gained 
by deceiving some pure but trusting and affec- 
tionate girl, or by following the way of some 
professional harlot, it will invariably prove an 
indellible stain upon the nobler constituents 
of character, and the memory of the deed will 
forever gnaw the conscience. Carnality in- 
jures a young man just as much as it does a 
young woman. The fact that he is more likely 
to escape public censure only tends to trans- 
form him into a more foolish brute, and into a 
more villainous and cunning knave. When 
such a man leads some pure sweet girl to the 
marriage altar, the ghost of his sin will be 

198 



Paying the Piper. 

there. When he drinks from the fountains of 
wedded bhss it will pollute, with bitter dregs, 
the sacred cup. When his children play and 
sing around his fireside, their innocent voices 
will meet a haunting and blighting echo within 
his soul. 

By leading impure and dissolute lives, young 
men not only ruin their own health and shorten 
their own lives but threaten the degeneracy of 
the entire race. Until a higher standard of pub- 
lic morals prevails, it will not be safe to con- 
sider young men other than enemies to society 
and a constant menace to the American home. 
The eflfects of their sins are a scourge to the 
race which will inevitably grow more deep- 
seated and disastrous until the ravages are 
stayed by a social reform. 

No diseases are so loathsome and incurable 
as those contracted through sexual transgres- 
sions. The man polluted by venereal disease is 
a walking contagion. His presence is a con- 
stant danger to health and life. There are, all 
the time, thousands of young men in our na- 
tion whose bodies are filled with consuming 
rottenness — vile, accursed and communicative 
— the result of sensuality. If they were cattle, 
instead of human beings, the health authorities, 
in behalf of public safety, would demand that 
they be killed and their polluted carcasses 
burned or buried beyond the reach of buzzards. 

199 



Manhood's Morning. 

It would not be safe to tan their hides for shoe- 
leather. But such men court and marry pure, 
innocent girls, and raise families of children 
and give to them an enfeebled vitality and the 
germs of loathsome disease as an inheritance. 

In some countries of the world the ravages 
of venereal diseases have risen to the magni- 
tude of a plague. During a single year there 
were admitted to the hospitals of the United 
Kingdoms of Europe 21,965 cases of venereal 
disease, and in over 11,000 cases the malady 
showed itself in its very worst form. That it 
prevails in our own land, chiefly in large cities 
and manufacturing centres, every physician 
knows. It is found among all conditions of 
people and visits alike the hovel and the palace. 
Nothing is more terrible than the remorse which 
these diseases are sure to bring. Quacks reap 
a golden harvest from the victims — in their 
filth of body and ignominy of soul these terror- 
stricken wretches swarm around arrant fraud 
like moths about a lighted candle. 

Upon nothing has God pronounced judg- 
ments more severe than upon licentiousness. 
The Bible is full of denunciations regarding it. 
''Be not deceived'^ says the Apostle : ''neither 
fornicators nor adulterers shall inherit the 
kingdom of God.'' Says the wise man : "None 
that go unto her return again f ' they shall 
"mourn at the last when their flesh and their 

200 



Paying the Piper. 

body are consumed/' The bold and practical 
Apostle said : ''When lust hath conceived it 
bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, 
bringeth forth death/' Well might the inscrip- 
tion, which Dante has inscribed over the gate of 
hell, be placed over the pathway of every young 
man who seeks for pleasure in sensuous indul- 



'Through me you pass to the city of woe, 
Through me you pass into eternal pain, 
Through me, among the people lost for aye. 

All hope abandon ye who enter here." 

Sexual indulgence is never necessary for 
health. While it is not claimed that this is a 
medical book, I wish to discuss this subject 
from a professional standpoint. Thousands of 
young men are led to believe that their manly 
vigor and inherent passions require an outlet, 
and that sexual indulgences are conducive to 
health. Physicians who have not studied the 
subject deeply can, perhaps, be found who 
would sanction such a theory. No impression 
is more false. A chaste and continent life fa- 
vors, in every way, good health. More than 
this; it is promotive of the highest strength, 
beauty and personal magnetism. 

In order to gain the opinion of the Medical 
Profession upon this subject, a large number of 

20I 



Manhood's Morning. 

eminent physicians have been interviewed by 
a careful investigator. Their unanimous opin- 
ion is in favor of a continent Hfe. A declara- 
tion has recently been signed by over fifty phy- 
sicians, occupying prominent positions as medi- 
cal men and as Professors in colleges, stating 
*^that chastity — a pure continent life, for both 
sexes, — is consonant with the best conditions of 
physical, mental and moral health/' Among 
the long list of signatures appear such names 
as D. B. St. John Rosa, M. D., LL. D., Presi- 
dent New York Academy of Medicine ; George 
F. Shrady, M. D., Consulting Chief, Hospitals 
of Health Department, New York City, and 
Editor Medical Record; Prof. John H. Billings, 
M. D.; Prof. Ephraim Cutter, M. D. ; Prof. 
John A. Wyeth, M. D., New York Polyclinic ; 
Andrew H. Smith, M. D., New York Presby- 
terian Hospital ; Prof. Henry Dwight Chapin, 
M. D., of New York Post-Graduate Medical 
School and Hospital ; Prof. R. C. M. Page, M. 
D., New York Polyclinic; Prof. David Web- 
ster, M. D., New York Polyclinic and Dart- 
mouth College, and Prof. Eugene H. Porter, 
M. A., M. D., New York Homeoepathic Col- 
lege. 

Says Prof. M. L. Holbrook, of New York 
Medical College : "How it ever came about that 
any one, especially a physician, who sees the 
evil results of unchastity, should believe it nec- 

202 



Paying the Piper. 

essary to health is a mystery to me/' Henry 
C. Houghton, M. D., of New York Ophthalmic 
Hospital, says : ''Certainly ; it is a sad comment 
on our American civilization that there is any 
debate on this matter/' J. Mount Bleyer, M. 
D., says : ''It is my belief that most of the sui- 
cides are due to these excessive practices in 
both sexes. It is the business of the physician 
to step in as a reformer, and begin to educate, 
and to open the eyes of mothers, fathers, daugh- 
ters and sons regarding the effects of sexual 
overstimulation." Prof. Lyman B. Sperry, M. 
D., of Carlton College, in his admirable book. 
Confidential Talks with Young Men, says: 
"No condition of an unmarried man demands, 
or even justifies, from a physiological, or any 
other standpoint, that he consort sexually with 
any woman, or that he resort to any measure, 
natural or unnatural, for the gratification of 
his sexual desires. Complete abstinence from 
sexual indulgence is not only safe for an un- 
married man, it is the only safe course for him." 
In reply to an inquiry, the eight Professors of a 
Medical University recently signed a declara- 
tion stating: "We know of no disease or any 
weakness which can be said to be the result of 
a perfectly pure, chaste life." 

The combined costs of evil habits and vice 
are beyond calculation. It has already been 
stated that evil habits are seldom practiced 

203 



Manhood's Morning. 

singly. A few young men may have only one 
bad habit — nothing more — but such cases are 
exceedingly rare. The great mass — the mil- 
lions — of men serve pleasure for all there is in 
it. Young America seldom does things by 
halves. When young men seek after pleasure, 
as a rule, they taste every fruit, drink from 
every bowl and enter every doorway. They 
follow every indulgence, satiate every desire — 
and reap all the consequences. It is the un- 
checked and wholesale surrender to evil habits 
and wickedness that must be measured. 

Man was made to live a pure, natural life 
and the laws which govern his existence are so 
inexorable that every transgression incurs a 
corresponding punishment. ''Whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap.'' He who 
thinks or plans otherwise mocks God. If 
twelve million young men sin, twelve million 
young men, or their posterity, in manifold 
greater number, must suffer in consequence. 

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet 

they grind exceeding small ; 
Though with patience He stands waiting, 
with exactness grinds He all/' 

Within the vitals of the young men of Amer- 
ica exist the forces which will some day be 
transformed into the future generations of the 
land. Young men are already the fatherhood 

204 



Paying the Piper. 

of posterity. The fact that the embryonic 
and proximate elements of a majority of the 
countless millions, yet unborn, float in the ven- 
om of nicotine — in the poison of alcohol — in 
blood made hot by passion — under imxaginations 
that revel in lust — imprisoned in a realm where 
God is blasphemed — where love is unhal- 
lowed, where virtue is jeered and where fath- 
erhood is ignored — this fact, in its momentous 
importance, stands paramount, unrivaled and 
first. It is within these mysterious and primi- 
tive confines that the issues of life germinate 
and receive their bent and predilections. Here 
it is that unnatural affection, disobedience, 
hatred of that which is good, selfishness and 
perverse tendencies are born. Here it is that 
the promises of God are bartered away, the 
natural birthrights blasted and life's destinies 
mortgaged to the devil 

Young men are infinitely more responsible, as 
fathers, before their children are born than 
ever afterward. The difference between the 
good and the bad, the upright and the vicious, 
the physically sound and the diseased is largely 
a question of birth and ancestry. The only 
way to train up a child in the way it should 
go is to begin years before it is born, and this 
lesson young men must learn. 'Tn the iniqui- 
ties of their fathers shall they pine away,'' said 
the great Lawgiver. ''Visiting the iniquity of 

205 



Manhood's Morning. 

the fathers upon the children/' is a Divine law. 
A thoughtless, perverse fatherhood forms the 
basis of untold misery and death. Whole fam- 
ilies are becoming syphilitic, scrofulous and 
consumptive and dying out of existence, the 
latter disease carrying off over 300,000 annu- 
ally. Whole families are becoming intemper- 
ate, profligate and morally depraved. Whole 
families are becoming nervous, insane and im- 
becile. 

Scrofula and consumption are chiefly the off- 
spring of ancestral venereal disease. While 
consumption in its fully developed stages ex- 
hibits bacteriological features yet the chief in- 
cipient cause is an enervated nervous system — 
a neurosis — that is becoming widespread. The 
same might be said of nasal catarrh which is 
so prevalent in our nation. That the American 
people have grown more tense and nervous 
every physician knows. Nervous prostration, 
nervous debility, neurasthenia, nervous dys- 
pepsia and other neurosis have become ex- 
tremely prevalent, and seriously threaten the 
vigor and strength of our national physique. A 
well marked characteristic of the present age 
is that an increasing number of people live close 
to the margin of ill health. One-third of the 
children born have not vitality enough to sur- 
vive to adult age. Over one-half million per- 
sons die annually who, under the best possible 

206 



Paying the Piper. 

conditions, should continue to live; and the 
large number constantly sick and invalid are 
becoming a reproach to civilization and pro- 
gress. 

The riciprocal and radiating influences of 
these conditions are seen everywhere. As a 
prop for debility, and as a palliative for ultra- 
natural pain, the people flock to stimulants, 
narcotics and sedatives. Not only alcohol and 
tobacco, but opium, chloral and other drugs that 
enslave are widely used. The consumption of 
opium has rapidly increased in our nation. At 
the present time from one-quarter to one-half 
million persons are habitues of the drug. It is 
claimed by good authority that opium, in all its 
forms, destroys more lives annually than li- 
quor. Its effects upon the moral sense is ru- 
inous to the extreme. Of course, no one thing 
is the sole cause of this almost universal trend 
of our national life. Climate, social customs, 
intense business activities, fashion and many 
other things play their part, but the primal and 
basic cause is unquestionably 'Svild oats" as 
sown by young men. 

It is a significant fact that where dissipation 
and vice prevail, healthy and robust men are not 
so longlived as the more frail and delicate. The 
best swimmer is most likely of all to be 
drowned, and the most powerful man is apt to 
outdo his strength. So it is that, unless re- 

207 



Manhood's Morning. 

strained by moral principle, the man most lav- 
ishly endowed v/ith vigor is of all most apt to 
fall into ruin, and the most brilliant and gifted 
are the most tempted to resort to artificial stim- 
ulation. Life insurance companies are rapidly 
finding out that it is not a man's physical con- 
dition and general health at any specified time, 
but his habits and morals that most surely de- 
cide the question of longevity. 

Bad habits and vice cause sex deterioration. 
Young men are incomparably less moral than 
young women. The disparity between the 
sexes morally is apparent to all. A chief reason 
for this is plain. They inherit the predisposi- 
tion from their fathers. Vice and evil habits 
have become a matter of sex; they are largely 
confined to the male side, and heredity is dis- 
posed to keep them there. Consumption, rheu- 
matism and many other diseases, unlike some 
traits of character, are much more apt to go, 
as an inheritance, from father to son, or from 
mother to daughter, than to wander across the 
lines of distinction made by sex. Each suc- 
ceeding generation of young men that yields 
to profligacy makes this hereditary tendency 
more organic and its results more disastrous. 
Male children are more apt to die in childhood 
than female, due no doubt, to a similar cause. 
When the age of manhod is reached the death 
rate rapidly rises, which is much less marked 

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Paying the Piper. 

among women. Seven times as many men as 
women die suddenly. It is within the power 
of young men — the coming fathers — and none 
others, to lessen and destroy the hereditary ten- 
dencies to vice and evil habits. That they do so 
little, or nothing at all, is an amazing neglect of 
duty. Far more attention is paid to the im- 
provement of the stock among horses and cat- 
tle, or even among chickens and dogs, than to 
that of immortal human beings. 

Evil habits cause young men to aruoid whole- 
some and elevating companionships. From the 
moment a boy takes his first lesson in any form 
of vice until he is lost in utter ruin, the whole 
tendency is to forsake that which is good and 
seek that which is evil. Nothing will cause 
boys and young men to quit the church and 
other religious influences, to avoid female so- 
ciety and seek questionable associations like 
conscious guilt. The vulgar and profane feel 
uncomforcable except among their own chums. 
Those who use tobacco or drink instinctively 
seek isolation from those who are free from 
such habits. The smoking car accompanying 
all trains, the men's cabin on all steamers and 
the loafing facilities around all barrooms are 
the natural product of bad habits. 

By being thus divorced from elevating influ- 
ences young men come to lose all interest in re- 
ligion, ignore the Bible, descrate the Sabbath, 

14 209 



Manhood's Morning. 

avoid female society and abandon moral re- 
straints. They deny themselves the advantages 
of the salt of the earth and of the light of the 
world. They rapidly become like those with 
whom they associate and they become organic- 
ally wedded to a low standard of morals from 
which they have no desire to depart. 

On account of evil habits young men for- 
feit their influence for good. Their force in 
combating evil, on this account, is almost wholly 
annulled. A man's moral courage and his in- 
fluence over his fellows are usually measured 
by the weakest spot in his character. As a class 
young men engage in no warfare against the 
great evils of the day. Lawlessness, dens of in- 
iquity, speak-easies and deviltry of any and 
every sort may boldly and fearlessly operate, 
and go on unrebuked, if none but young men 
witness the exploits. Bad habits so harden 
young men that they can stand and view, with 
stoic indifference, the most debasing episodes 
of shame or the most flagrant carnivals of sin. 
They become only too willing to flock around 
and patronize such things as do flies about a 
honey-baited trap. Satan never fears young 
men, and wastes no time defending himself 
against them. While moral heroes and women 
are waging a relentless warfare against intem- 
perance and vice, young men, crippled by guilt, 
stand afar off, without the necessary armor, 

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Paying the Piper. 

moral courage, or strength to enlist in the con- 
flicts. 

When the great revivals of religion take 
place, or when temperance workers gather in 
signers to the pledge, it is not unusual that in a 
short time the altars are forsaken and the 
pledges broken and the last end of such saved 
and rescued is worse than the first. It may be 
set down as an invariable rule that the chief 
cause of these lapses of will power is due to 
the fact that evil habits exist which are more 
powerful than the efforts put forth to aban- 
don them. 

Evil Jmbits and vice prevent marriage and 
the perpetuity of the home. Says a famous 
writer : ''America is on the verge of an age of 
unmarried women, because young men do not 
earn enough to support wives, and there is such 
a craze for dissipation among them that women 
had rather go in stores for almost nothing than 
risk their future in the bonds of marriage." 
Said a noted lecturer recently: ''The reason 
there are so few marriages is because there are 
so many young men in jails and penitentiaries ; 
tramping the country and loafing on street 
corners ; spending their money in saloons and 
in questionable resorts of pleasure and wasting 
the flower of their manhood in dissipation and 
idleness/' There are more males than females 
born, but the number of girls who would make 

211 



Manhood's Morning. 

faithful and desirable wives outnumber the 
^'good catches'' among young men many times 
over. The modern girl is not preparing to get 
married, as of yore, but is training herself in 
order that she may live independently by earn- 
ing her own living. When a young man fails 
to marry and support a woman in dignity as 
wife and mother, as he should, he has no right 
to find fault if she become his rival in the 
higher industries and professions and forces 
him into menial avocations or idleness. That 
our nation, during times of peace and plenty 
and when the home life ought to reach its high- 
est development, should produce a crop of over 
3,000,000 confirmed bachelors and a corres- 
ponding number of unmarried women; that 
the birthrate should decrease, which has hith- 
erto been an unfailing symptom, a pathogno- 
monic forerunner of national decay ; that young 
men and young women, instead of entering 
matrimony and establishing homes and rearing 
families, should become rivals and antagonists 
in professional life, in store and workshop, fur- 
nish a condition demanding most serious con- 
cern. Man's first duty to woman is to see that 
she shall not be obliged to go out into the 
w^orld to earn her own livelihood. It is not 
woman's, but man's fault, that she does not 
marry. She is foregoing her God-intended 
mission, not from choice, but because vice, bad 

212 



Paying the Piper. 

habits and improvidence among young men 
have made it justifiable and wise for her to do 
so. 

Evil habits pervert business and corrU'pt 
wealth. The Hquor bill of the nation is about 
$1,200,000,000; the tobacco habit costs $800,- 
000,000 ; marketable sensuality in an organized 
form, follows as third among the expensive 
vices. The cost of crime is rapidly increasing 
and the constant drain upon mind and muscle 
and legitimate business has become a tax of gi- 
gantic proportions. This perversion of busi- 
ness, in the aggregate amounts to at least $3,- 
000,000,000, annually. About one million 
young men reach their majority every year and 
if this vast sum, w^hich is worse than squan- 
dered, were made to flow into their hands it 
would give to each one three thousand dollars 
as a start in life. This constant outlay is the 
source of untold misery and poverty. Every 
dollar so spent is that much out of pocket with 
absolutely no equivalent in return. 

In these days, when political and moral 
questions are so intensely discussed, the extent 
and sources of evil habits and poverty, and their 
relation to each other, are closely studied. It is 
claimed on the one hand that from fifty-five to 
eighty per cent, of the poverty in the nation is 
due to intemperance and vice; while on the 
other hand it is claimed that from fifty to sev- 

213 



Manhood's Morning. 

enty-five per cent, of the intemperance and 
vice we see is due to poverty. Says Josiah 
Strong in The New Era: ''Doubtless much pov- 
erty is due to drunkenness, and again much 
drunkenness is due to poverty/' Beyond ques- 
tion bad habits and vice are the first and deeper 
cause and also more blighting and destructive 
in their results. In all genuine reform the first 
step must be to change the habits and life of 
the individual. This all can do, and it is the 
only way to begin to abolish poverty. 

'Those who study physical sciences,'' wrote 
Charles Dickens, ''and bring them to bear upon 
the health of men, tell us that if noxious par- 
ticles that rise from vitiated air were palpable 
to the sight, we should see them lowering in a 
dense black cloud above such haunts, and roll- 
ing slowly on to corrupt the better portion of 
the town. But if the moral pestilence that 
rises with them, and in the eternal laws of out- 
raged nature, is inseparable from them, could 
be discernible too, how terrible the revelation! 
Then should we see impiety, depravity, drunk- 
enness, theft, murder, and a long train of name- 
less sins against the natural affections and re- 
pulsions of mankind, overhanging the devoted 
spots, and creeping on to blight the innocent 
and spread contagion among the pure. Then 
should we see how the same poisoned fountains 
flow in to our hospitals and lazar-houses, in- 

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Paying the Piper. 

undate the jails, and make the convict ships 
swim deep, and roll across the seas, and over- 
run vast continents with crime. Then should 
we stand appalled and know that where we 
generate disease to strike our children down 
and entail itself upon unborn generations, there 
also we breed, by the same process, infancy that 
knows no innocence, youth without modesty or 
shame, maturity that is mature in nothing but 
suffering and guilt, blasted age that is a scan- 
dal on the form we bear. Unnatural humanity ! 
When we shall 'gather grapes from thorns' or 
'figs from thistles' ; when fields of grain shall 
spring up from the offal in the by-ways of our 
wicked cities and roses bloom in the fat church 
yards that they cherish ; then may we look for 
natural humanity and find it growing from 
such seed." 

**The tissue of the life to' be, 

We weave with colors all our own; 
And in the field of destiny, 
We reap as we have sown/' 

Vice and evil habits assail every interest 
and every possession. Life, health, intellect 
and will; religion, society, patriotism and fra- 
ternities ; wealth, success and prosperity, alike, 
go down to ruin under their destroying power. 

But who can measure the havoc of evil habits 
and vice? Social and personal impurity has 

215 



Manhood's Morning. 

been the subtle and devouring octopus of hu- 
man history. Through its power empires and 
kingdoms, glorying in their strength and mag- 
nificence and surpassing in their wealth and 
culture, have fallen to pieces and gone down 
into oblivion. It was on account of impurity 
and vice that God destroyed the human race by 
the flood; it was for the same reason that 
Sodom and Gomorrah were blotted out of ex- 
istence. Impurity, especially among young 
men, caused the overthrow of magnificent and 
mighty Babylon, cultured and classic Athens 
and powerful and aggressive Rome. It has 
done more to dethrone governments and na- 
tions, obliterate happiness and destroy life than 
despotism, war and famine combined. It is 
God's worst enemy and Satan's best friend. It 
turns the beauty of youth into a passing de- 
lusion, the strength of mature manhood into a 
fruitless struggle and old age into a vain re- 
gret. It transforms health and vigor into de- 
creptitude, and in place of the virgin bloom 
and innocent radiance of young manhood it 
gives the hectic blush and the pallid outlines of 
guilt. It robs the eye of its fascination and 
lustre and daubs its sockets with a dull and ex- 
pressionless blear. It plunders man of .respect- 
ful gallantry and protecting chivalry and ve- 
neers him with sneaking efifrontery and impu- 
dent "brass" and "cheek." 

2l6 



Paying the Piper. 

*1 waive the quantum of the sin, 

The hazard of concealing; 
But oh, it burdens all within, 

And petrifies the feeHng." 

Impurity destroys the natural affections and 
the nobler aspirations and fills the soul with 
hatred and remorse. It shuts out love and hope 
and heaven and leaves man in darkness and 
despair. *'Be not deceived : God is not mocked ; 
for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." 'When lust hath conceived, it bringeth 
forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth 
forth death.'' 



217 



CHAPTER VII. 
What Young Men Must Be. 



Show thyself a man. — David, 

''Call up thy noble spirit, 
Rouse all the generous energies of virtue, 
And with the strength of heaven-endued man 
Repel the hideous foe! Be great, be valiant! 
O, if thou couldst, e'en shrouded as thou art 
In all the sad infirmities of nature, 
What a most noble creature wouldst thou be !'* 

'TiRST BE A man/' — Rousscau. 

''Manhood is above all riches, overtops all titles and 
character is greater than any career." 

Orison Swett Harden. 

Be sure, my son, remember that the best men al- 
ways make themselves. — Patrick Henry. 

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in 
rising every time we fall. — Confucius. 

The truest test of civilization is not the census, nor 
the size of cities, nor the crops ; no, but the kind of 
man the country turns out. — Emerson, 

The secret of success in life is for a man to he ready 
for his opportunity when it conies. — Disraeli. 

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination * * * 
I have only one counsel for you — Be master. 

Napoleon. 

As there is nothing in the world great but man, 
there is nothing truly great in man but character. 

William M. Evarts. 

The reverence of man's self is, next to religion, the 
chiefest bridle of all vices. — Bacon. 

220 



CHAPTER VII. 

WHAT YOUNG MEN MUST BE. 

IN the making of history the forces that 
operate are constantly radiating into new 
fields. Every new epoch in our progress 
has brought out and emphasized new 
and noble traits of character. Men have been 
called upon to meet one crisis and then another 
and new and special duties confront each suc- 
ceeding generation. Ignorance, superstition, 
despotism and war have all in turn, had their 
struggles and conquests and the world, surviv- 
ing them all, is looking, with exultant hopeful- 
ness, into the future. 

Symmetry of development has been a con- 
stant characteristic of our nation's history. 
With increasing national resources have come 
a demand for higher ideals in the individual. 
The liberties, which we enjoy have developed 
virtue, industry, education, talent, inventive 
genius and indomitable push and enterprise. 
The founders of the nation had an unswerving 
faith in their children and children's children. 
They so planned the country's destinies that in- 
asmuch as they were faithful over a few things 

221 



Manhood's Morning. 

their posterity should be rulers over many 
things. They staked the future of the repub- 
lic upon manhood and not upon wealth and 
commerce. Little did they know of the ex- 
tent of field and forest and less of the wealth 
of mine and mountain. Virtue, intelligence, 
industry and independence were the pillars 
upon which the nation was founded and upon 
these must it rest forever. 

In this new era the principle '^Quality rather 
than Quantity'' is being applied to men. The 
time has come when being something is an es- 
sential preliminary to doing something. The 
duties and successes of life have called men to a 
higher plane of activity. That so many refuse 
to be led is the chief cause of the discord, un- 
happiness and failure so common. 

A new and more perfect type of manhood — 
a new personnel — is called for. The real 
worth and intrinsic value of a man does not 
consist of the abundance of his wealth but of a 
richly endowed and well poised personality. 
The most useful citizen is he who rises highest 
as an individual. He is most loyal to his coun- 
try who is truest to his own integrity. The 
greatest friend to liberty is he who governs 
himself. The noblest patriot is not the might- 
iest, but the purest man. 

The battles of the future will be unlike those 
of the past. The enemies of our nation to-day 

222 



What Young Men Must Be. 

are not skirmishing in the distance with musket 
and cannon, but they are in our midst. They are 
^'bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh" ; they 
have been born upon our soil and have grown 
up with us and form an organic part of our 
national life. The tactics of future warfare will 
not consist in trying to get within shooting 
distance of some foreign or alien enemy but in 
getting the enemy far enough separated from 
our own bosoms to give it a telling blow. Our 
foes are no longer telescopic but microscopic, 
not hideous and repulsive but subtle and win- 
ning. Right and wrong are no longer national 
differences, with oceans and well defined bor- 
der lines between. Men do not go out to meet 
treason, oppression and wickedness in open 
conflict, upon the field of battle, and conquer 
with sword, rifle and cannon. Good and evil 
commingle, and live and work and play to- 
gether. They sit in the same pew and are 
schooled under the same curriculum. Indeed, 
the good and evil of modern times wrestle in 
the same breast and wage a relentless warfare 
within the same vitals, mind and heart. 

To simply multiply in numbers will never 
make America great as a nation. Wealth that 
is concentrated, power that is selfish and dog- 
matic will never insure our safety. America's 
security must ever depend upon the character 
of its citizens. 

223 



Manhood's Morning. 

Our ability to successfully and profitably en- 
joy liberty, peace and prosperity is being put 
to a crucial test. Mankind is called upon to 
govern itself. ''We live in an age/' said Ed- 
ward Everett, ''and in a country where positive 
laws and institutions have, comparatively, but 
little direct force. But human nature remains 
the same. The passions are as wild, as ardent 
and as ungovernable in a republic as in a des- 
potism.'' Herein lies our danger. Men are 
called upon not to be slaves but to be freemen, 
not to serve but to govern, not to bow to op- 
pression but to stand erect in the clear sunlight 
of liberty. 

This is man's normal sphere but it is the 
most difficult to fill. His highest and ultimate 
sphere is not to toil and drudge but to subdue 
and to exercise dominion. The present is a 
new era in the world's history ; it represents a 
triumph of liberty; it is a crisis in the history 
of manhood. The new epoch is one of peace 
and 

"Peace hath higher tests of manhood 
Than battle ever knew." 

There is a growing desire among all classes 
of people for a more contented and prosperous 
age. The past with its records of war, oppres- 
sion and suffering is rapidly losing its prestige. 

224 



What Young Men Must Be. 

Human experiences have, so far, been little else 
than wandering in a wilderness and there is a 
widespread and honest search for a grand 
highway which shall lead to a more prosperous 
and equitable era. The popular mind and heart 
are dissatisfied. Out of conflicting thoughts 
and energies is expected to come forth an ideal 
condition. 

No matter how much froth and sentimental- 
ism there may be upon the surface, man re- 
mains thoughtful, practical and serious. The 
noise and apparent friction, occasioned by the 
rapidity with which we move, may make a 
few skeptical and pessimistic, yet there con- 
tinues an unswerving faith in the future. Hope 
was never so firm and anticipation never so 
confiding as they are to-day. 

^'Forward ! ye deluded nations, 

Progress is the rule of all: 
Man was made for healthful effort; 

Tyranny has crushed him long; 
He shall march from good to better, 

And do battle with the wrong." 

Young men must make the most and best 
of themselves. Nobility of character has ever 
been the bulwark of nations. History teaches 
nothing more plainly than that progress and 
prosperity, require a corresponding improve- 
ment in the type of manhood. The grave- 

15 225 



Manhood's Morning. 

stones of almost every former republic warn 
us that a high standard of moral rectitude as 
well as of intelligence is indispensable. 

While human history runs back nearly six 
thousand years, men are alive to-day who have 
v/itnessed one-half of the world's progress. 
As the world moves forward men are required 
to move upward and develop superior qualities 
of mind and character. America is demanding 
the energy, force and strength of the strongest 
of men; an energy, force and strength which 
only the young possess, and which the young 
attain only through self-sacrifice and deter- 
mined effort. 

When the world was young it judged men 
by what they said; as it grows older it esti- 
mates them according to what they do. ''What 
a man does is the real test of what a man is; 
and to talk of what great things one would ac- 
complish if he had more talent, is to say how 
strong a man would be if he had more 
strength/' The world is seeking for men with 
the strength and force of quality. It is de- 
manding a manhood that believes what it now 
doubts, that constructs what it now neglects, 
that cultivates and saves what it now wastes ; 
that lays upon the altars of duty and loyalty 
what it now sacrifices at the shrine of base in- 
dulgences and selfish greed. 

There is at the present time an overwhelming 

226 



tWhat Young Men Must Be. 

glut of incompetency and a famine of available, 
desirable men. Young men are begging no 
harder for work than high grade positions are 
begging for competent men to fill them. The 
entire realm of supply and demand is so exact 
and rigid that only goods of standard merit 
are sure of finding buyers in the markets of the 
world, and when men are wanted only those 
who meet a certain standard of excellence find 
desirable positions. Goods in the stores of 
merchants are literally plastered over with qual- 
ity marks. Those labeled "XXX," "A, No. i," 
''Extra-superfine,'' ''Unadulterated,'' ''Genu- 
ine," 'T X L," "Guaranteed," "All Wool and 
Full Width," or "Fast Colors," find apprecia- 
tive buyers, while those without anything to 
recommend them become shop-worn and must 
be sold at the bargain counter or at auction to 
the highest bidder. So it is with hundreds of 
thousands of young men. They swarm into the 
great centres of manufacture and commerce, 
representing an indefinite capacity and many 
of them a questionable quality, and while those 
who possess a special degree of grit and ability 
gain positions and success, the majority become 
a drug in the world's busy marts only to be 
shoved aside and doomed to idleness, servi- 
tude and poverty. 

A mistake made by too many young men is 
to imagine that they can act out in their lives 

227 



Manhood's Morning. 

the part of useful and exemplary citizens with- 
out embodying corresponding traits of char- 
acter within their own natures. As none but 
a strong arm can strike a powerful blow and 
only a keen, analytical mind can solve abstruse 
mental problems, so it is equally true that it re- 
quires the presence of a well-trained moral 
character to exert a strong moral force. '*The 
fountain cannot rise higher than its source," 
and the deeds of man, his real success and his 
deserved fame and honor can never be higher 
or greater than is the source of all these — the 
character of the man himself. 

The hearts of men, more than their heads or 
hands, shape history. ''Out of the fullness of 
the heart the mouth speaketh,'' and the mind 
and energies work out the achievements of life. 

Multitudes of young men make a failure of 
life, not because the chances of success do not 
exist, but because the elements of success are 
not within them. If there is nothing in a young 
man he may live under the most promising con- 
ditions of health, wealth and opportunities; 
he may have greatness thrust upon him, yet his 
life will prove a failure. Such a person will 
never attain success. But if the elements of 
success are in a young man he may be born in 
poverty and obscurity, so much the better; he 
may be haunted by infirmity and disappoint- 
ment, but these will not dishearten ; friends may 

228 



What Young Men Must Be. 

forsake him and foes embitter his life, but he 
braves the storm ; he may meet difficulties and 
embarrassments, but he is bound to succeed in 
spite of these things. Indeed, in the face of a 
capable, determined and courageous man ob- 
stacles and disappointments are only boulders 
upon which to climb, and the bitter experiences 
of adversity and opposition are simply incen- 
tives to greater diligence and nobler efforts. 

Young men must be diligent and progressive 
in business. Diligence is more than simply in- 
dustry. It means working with the might; 
throwing energy, heart and life into what we 
do. An ox or a mule may be industrious but 
they are never diligent. ''Diligence is the 
mother of luck,'' and is always the price of 
genuine success. 

Nothing so recommends a young man to the 
experienced business man like honest diligence. 
Nothing so quickly severs confidence as a slov- 
enly lack of interest. 

There is need of a revolution in the prevail- 
ing personal business methods of young men. 
With a few rare exceptions they use no system 
whatever in the management of their individual 
finances. The loose and careless manner in 
which they fritter away their small early earn- 
ings is simply ruinous. The foundations of 
almost every really successful career has been 
humbly laid by saving small fragments se- 

229 



Manhood's Morning. 

cured through industry, patience and self- 
denial. 

When young men squander their first earn- 
ings, be they ever so small, as a rule, it becomes 
a fixed habit and they live and die poor. If the 
first chances to save are wasted future oppor- 
tunities are apt to pass unnoticed. When a 
young man is working for his board and two 
dollars per week he is just as surely a business 
man as the bank president or the merchant 
prince. It is his duty, at the end of each week, 
to be able to make out a trial balance sheet, 
and, if possible, declare a dividend and increase 
his bank account as a capitalist. 

By early adopting systematic habits of busi- 
ness young men receive the advantages of a 
most wholesome discipline. Earning money by 
honest work not only develops the muscle, but 
practicing economy and laying by a portion for 
the future is an intellectual exercise eminently 
elevating to the moral nature. 

Young men must he vigilant for the right. 
What young men need most is to become en- 
amored of humanity. What the world needs 
most is the love and sympathy of strong and 
brave men. The world has many reforms to be 
wrought, many crusades to be manned and 
many conquests in behalf of truth and justice 
to be achieved, and young men alone possess 
the power and endurance to conquer. 

230 



What Young Men Must Be. 

Young men, more than any other class, 
should be interested in the effort to correct the 
evils of intemperance, crime and lawlessness. 
Tens of thousands, many of them the very 
choicest of their number, go down to drunk- 
ards' graves every year. An appalling multitude 
waste their health and earnings in supporting 
the dram shops of the nation and millions of 
them pale their cheeks, dwarf their bodies and 
sap their intellects through the use of tobacco. 
These millions of young men are the trusted 
friends and bosom companions of millions of 
other young men. They are held together by 
all the affinities of brotherly good-will, luxuri- 
ous spirits and personal magnetism. They are 
at each other's elbows, they grasp each other's 
hands and cheer each other's hearts. 

Old men and women, philanthropists and 
benefactors may preach and sing and plead and 
sympathize to rid the world of evils but they 
will not prevail. These warfares belong to 
young men. They must not simply help but 
they must do the world's reforms. 

When Lincoln, in 1861, called for volunteers, 
the men of the North, in amazing numbers, en- 
listed within forty-eight hours. These men 
represented the strength, bravery and patriot- 
ism of the nation and more than one-half of 
them were under twenty-three years of age. 
Men are called for to-day, not in one conflict 

231 



Manhood's Morning. 

simply, but in many. The nation is being rob- 
bed of its possibilities by evils and selfish ambi- 
tions upon every side. Never was there a more 
positive demand for strong, brave, patriotic 
young men. 

*'God give us men, a time like this demands 

Great hearts, strong minds, true faith and ready hands. 

For while the rabble with its thumb-worn creeds, 
Its largest professions, and its little deeds 
Mingle in selfish strife, lo ! freedom weeps. 
Wrong rules the land and waiting justice sleeps." 

Young men must be pure in zvordj thought 
and life. Men will never be pure in life until 
they better appreciate their own bodies, and es- 
pecially their sexual natures. The body is the 
temple of God, and, next to the soul, the sexual 
nature is its chief occupant. The sexual na- 
ture give grace and symmetry to the body, elas- 
ticity to the step, warmth to the blood, strength 
to the heart, force to the mind, firmness to the 
will, beauty and radiance to the face and en- 
thusiasm and courage to the whole life. It 
gives to the behavior the grace and gallantry 
of the gentleman, to the emotions the instincts 
and aflfections of lover, husband and father, and 
to the countenance the image of The Divine. 

Untold injury has been wrought by stigma- 
tizing the sexual nature. Every boy, when he 

232 



What Young Men Must Be. 

blooms into manhood, should be taught that he 
enters an holy estate. The passions are not to 
be despised nor blasted by sin, but held and 
appreciated as a sacred possession and as the 
most attractive, noble and magnetic expression 
of manhood. 

Grant Allen, in ''The New Hedonism'' has 
beautifully and graphically described the sex- 
ual instinct: 'Tts alliance is with whatever is 
purest and most beautiful in us. To it we owe 
our love of bright colors, graceful forms, me- 
lodious sounds, rhythmical motion. To it we 
owe the evolution of music, of poetry, of ro- 
mance, of belles lettres; the evolution of paint- 
ing, of sculpture, of decorative art, of dramatic 
entertainment. To it we owe the entire exist- 
ence of our esthetic sense, which is, as a last re- 
sort, only a secondary sexual attribute. From 
it springs the love of beauty ; around it all beau- 
tiful arts circle as their centre. Its subtle aroma 
pervades all literature, and to it we owe the pa- 
ternal, maternal and marital relations; the 
growth of the affections, the love of little pat- 
tering feet and baby laughter ; the home, with 
all the dear associations that cluster around it ; 
in one word, the heart and all that is best in it. 

"If we look around among the inferior ani- 
mals, we shall see that the germs of everything 
which is best in humanity took their rise with 
them in the sexual instinct. The song of the 

233 



Manhood's Morning. 

nightingale or of Shelley's skylark is a song 
that has been acquired by the bird himself to 
charm the ears of his attentive partner. The 
chirp of the cricket, the cheerful note of the 
grasshopper, the twittering of the sparrow, the 
pleasant caw of the rookery — all these, Darwin 
showed, are direct products of sexual selection. 
Every pleasant sound that greets our ears from 
hedge or copse in a summer walk has the self- 
same origin. If we take away from the country 
the music conferred upon it by the sense of sex 
we shall have taken way every charm it pos- 
sesses, save the murmur of the brooks, and the 
whispering of the breeze through the leaves at 
evening. No thrush, no linnet, no blackbird, 
would be left ; no rattle of the night- jar over the 
twilight folds, no chirp of insect, no clatter of 
the tree-frog, no cry of the cuckoo from leafy 
covert. The whippoorwill and the bobolink 
would be mute as the serpent. Every beautiful 
voice in wild nature, from the mocking-bird to 
the cicala, is the essence of the love-call ; and 
without such love-calls the music of the fields 
would be mute and the forest silent. 

''Not otherwise is it with the beauty which 
appeals to the eye. Every lovely object in or- 
ganic nature owes its loveliness direct to sex- 
ual selection. The whole esthetic sense in ani- 
mals had that for its origin. Every spot on the 
feathery wings of butterflies was thus pro- 

234 



What Young Men Must Be. 

duced; every eye on the gorgeous glancing 
plume of the peacock. The bronze and golden 
hue of beetles, the flashing blue of the dragon- 
fly, the brilliant colors of tropical moths, the 
lamp of the glow-worm, the gleaming light of 
the firefly, spring from the same source. The 
infinite variety of crest and gorget among the 
iridescent humming-birds ; the glow of the tro- 
gon, the barbets among the palm blossoms; 
the exquisite plumage of the birds of paradise ; 
the bulb-and-socket ornament of the argus 
pheasant ; the infinite hue of parrot and macaw ; 
the strange bill of the gaudy toucon and the 
crimson wattle of the turkey still tell one story. 
The sun birds deck themselves for their court- 
ship in ruby and topaz, in chrysoprase and 
sapphire. Even the antlers of deer, the twisted 
horns of antelopes, and the graceful forms and 
dappled coats of so many other mammals have 
been developed in like manner by sexual selec- 
tion. The very fish in the sea show similar 
results of esthetic preferences. The butterfly 
fins of the gurnard and the courting colors of 
the stickleback have but one explanation. I 
need not elaborate this point. Darwin has al- 
ready made it familiar to most of us. Through- 
out the animal world almost every beautiful 
hue, almost every decorative adjunct is trace- 
able to the action of the sexual instinct. Ani- 
mals are pleasing to the eye just in proportion 



Manhood's Morning. 

to the amount of esthetic selection that their 
mates have exercised upon them ; and they are 
most pleasing of all when most sexually vigor- 
ous, especially at the culminating point of the 
pairing season. Tennyson's familiar lines give 
a new meaning when we read them thus, as il- 
lustrating the persistent thread of connection 
between the esthetic sense in man and animals : 

** 'In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the 

robin's breast ; 
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another 

crest. 
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished 

dove ; 
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to 

thoughts of love.' 

''Oddly enough, the same thing is true in all 
probability in the world of plants. Flowers are 
either the sexual organs themselves, as in the 
golden acacia, the meadow rue and the willow 
catkins ; or else they are the expanded and col- 
ored surfaces in the neighborhood of the sex- 
ual organs, intended to allure the fertilizing in- 
sects, as in the rose, the lily, the buttercup and 
the orchid. True, these expanded surfaces are 
not, like the tail feathers of the lyre-bird or 
the plumage of the kingfisher, the result of de- 
liberate selection on the part of the species it- 
self which displays them. They are product of 

236 



What Young Men Must Be. 

esthetic preferences exerted by the bee or but- 
terfly or brush-tongued lory. External organ- 
isms — birds and insects — have begotten them. 
Still, I hold that to any one who takes a wide 
and deep view of nature the fact itself is sig- 
nificant. In plants, as in animals, beautiful ad- 
juncts tend to develop themselves in immediate 
relation to the sexual function, and hardly at 
all elsewhere. 

"It is the same with fruits. Such exquisite 
objects as the pomegranate, bursting red 
through the rind on the tree ; the orange, aglow 
among its glossy green foliage; the cherry, 
the plum, the mango and the currant ; the pur- 
ple bloom on the grape, the blushing cheek of 
the peach — what are they but the mature state 
of the ovary of the female flower ? 

''Look at nature as a whole, and we shall see 
how truly all this is so. The song of birds, the 
chirp of insects, feather and fur, crest and ant- 
lers, the may in the hedgerow, the heather on 
the hill side, the berries on the holly, the crim- 
son fruit of the yew, the apple tree laden with 
the blushing blossoms in spring and with the 
blushing fruit in autumn, the great tropical 
flowering trunks in the forest, and the garru- 
lous birds and bright insects that flit, flashing 
through them — all alike owe their beauty to 
sexual needs and esthetic preferences. If one 
goes on a country walk, almost every fair ob- 

237 



Manhood's Morning. 

ject that attracts the eyes, from the gorse to the 
lady-bird, from the stately heron to the daisy on 
the common, attracts them in virtue of some 
sexual adornment. 

"I have pointed out already in my little book 
on the color sense that the most brilliant and 
decorative birds, insects or mammals, are, every 
one of them, either flower hunters or fruit eat- 
ers ; and that thus the entire beauty of the or- 
ganic world, with the sole exception of the 
death-tints of autumn, is wholly due to a sex- 
ual origin. 

''Still less need I dwell on the share which 
sex has borne in the development of the sym- 
pathies and the domestic affections. The par- 
ent bird with the nestlings, the males which 
feed their sitting mates, the ewe with her lamb, 
strike the key-note of something higher than 
even the esthetic sentiment. Tenderness and 
pathos come in with the paternal and marital 
relation. The love of mate, the love of young 
have this origin. Think of the widowed wren 
that laments her lost partner ; think of the love- 
bird that cannot consent to live when deprived 
of its companion; think of the very monkeys 
that refuse all food and die broken-hearted 
when the bodies of their dead mates are taken 
from them. 

''Thus, even below the human level, we see 
that the instinct of sex has been instrumental 

238 



What Young Men Must Be. 

in developing all the finest feelings which the 
lower creation shares with us or foreshadows 
parental responsibility for us. The sense of 
beauty, the sense of duty, paternal and mater- 
nal love, domestic affection, song, dance and 
decoration ; the entire higher life in its primi- 
tive manifestation; pathos and fidelity; in a 
word, the soul, the soul itself in embryo — all 
rise from the love of the sexes. 

^^Human life shows us the same thing in a 
more advanced development. The tenderest 
and most pathetic element in life is love ; round 
it all art, all romance, all poetry circle. The 
loveliest object on earth for the sane and 
healthy mind is a beautiful girl, a beautiful 
woman. The loveliest object art can represent 
in painting or sculpture is the nude male or 
female figure. Pure or half draped, it supplies 
the base of all ideal artistic representation. 
Man is beautiful ; woman is beautiful ; both are 
most beautiful in the budding period and plen- 
titude of their reproductive power. And love, 
which in itself is the most sacred and beauti- 
ful thing in the world, linked on every side 
with the tenderest afifection for father, mother, 
sister, husband and wife for son or daughter — 
love thus lovely in its essence has begotten 
among all higher arts and all higher emotions." 

There is a widespread impression that a pure 
and chaste mind is necessarily insipid, morose 

239 



Manhood's Morning. 

and incapable of joy and pleasure. Just the 
opposite is true. The sweetest and most pre- 
cious joys are as delicate as the life and fra- 
grance of the lily. God clothes the highest de- 
lights and most enrapturing pleasures in spot- 
less garments and he who besmirches them with 
filthy tongue or lustful eye robs life's most sa- 
cred fountains of their sweetness and beauty. 

*'Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power." 

It is not only possible, but it is imperatively 
necessary that the lives of men be as pure as 
those of women. It is shameful and wicked 
cowardice for men to erect a high standard of 
virtue for their sisters and a low standard for 
themselves. A pure life is the strength of man 
as it is the beauty of woman. 

**My strength is as the strength of ten 
Because my heart is pure." 

Purity of life is the palladium of earthly 
happiness; it is the stronghold of religion and 
the chief cornerstone of society. ^'He that 
hath it," says Milton, ''is clad in an armor of 
steel;" and Shakespeare says, 'Tt is the jewel 
of my house, bequeathed down from my an- 
cestors." It is "the mother of wisdom and de- 
liberation;" "the window in the soul through 

240 



What Young Men Must Be. 

which young manhood hears the angels of 
heaven singing songs of peace and welcome 
over the birth place of its children/' 

Reverence of the sexual nature has done 
more for the world than either power or 
wealth. It is the divine finishing touch in mak- 
ing a gentleman and is the harbinger of all 
the graces, be they physical, moral or spiritual. 
It surounds its possesor by an earthly paradise, 
it make women appear angelic and lays upon 
the marriage altar a feast of love. God loves 
a pure man, and it is seldom such are found 
who are not genuine Christians. The lives of 
such men are a beatitude, blessing the genera- 
tion in which they live and giving to the fibre 
of the race pure blood, invincible nerve and 
sterling qualities of mind and character. 

Young men must be woman s loyal friend. 
Man and woman were created equal and 
neither was given dominion over the other. 
Every true man holds sacred the estate of wom- 
anhood. Genuine gallantry enthrones all 
women. 

Young men are peculiarly interested in wom- 
an's welfare. The girls of America are their 
sisters ; they will become their sweethearts and 
life companions and will some day be the moth- 
ers of the nation. Woman ministers at the 
very fountain of life and happiness. Upon her 
health, her intelligence, her piety, her patience 

i6 241 



Manhood's Morning. 

and constancy, her temper and her beauty de- 
pend the comfort and success of mankind. 

''Of earthly goods, the best is a good wife; 
A bad, the bitterest curse of human Hfe." 

Of a good wife Jeremy Taylor says : ''Her 
voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest 
day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her 
arms the pale of his safety, the balm of his 
life; her industry his surest wealth, her econ- 
omy his safest steward, her lips his faithful 
counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his 
cares, and her prayers the ablest advocate of 
Heaven's blessings on his head/' To merit 
such a gift demands that man's heart be pure, 
that his lips be clean and that his life be free 
from guile. 

Young men must he religious. Of all the 
subjects which young men are called upon to 
consider religion is of first importance. Re- 
ligion equally concerns the entire human race. 
I do not feel called upon to champion the claims 
of religion nor to write a single word to prove 
its existence. He who cannot read it in the 
lives and characters of men and women is will- 
fully blind. The foe in America to-day is not 
open infidelity but neglect and indiflference 
toward the subject of religion. 

Religion is all it claims to be. It is not a 

242 



What Young Men Must Be. 

sentiment to feed the emotional nature. It is a 
moral and spiritual force and supplies man's 
highest needs. Through it man learns the way 
of eternal life, through it he learns of virtue 
and faith, hope and love. It moulds the char- 
acter and sweetens the life, it exalts all that is 
noble and establishes the brotherhood of man. 

There are three cardinal things connected 
with religion about which it is the duty of every 
young man to exercise convictions. These 
three things are : — The Bible, The Church and 
The Sabbath Day. 

The Bible is a young man's book. It is 
chiefly about young men — a record of their 
thoughts, their words and their deeds — and 
many of its teachings apply to them only. No 
book so upholds the supremacy of youth and 
young manhood. Threads of manly strength 
and vigor run through its pages from Eden to 
Patmos. It is written ^^to young men because 
they are strong.'' It is the only safe guide; 
the only perfect rule of life. ''Wherewithal 
shall a young man cleanse his way ; by taking 
heed thereto according to thy word." 

The Bible refers to young men and youths 
over two hundred times. Its most striking 
characters are young men — young kings, 
young prophets, young apostles and young he- 
roes. The prototypes of Christ were young 
men and Jesus Himself was a young man. 



Manhood's Morning. 

"'From my youth up/' was the certificate of 
character in Bible times. The whole realm of 
religious thought and activity needs resetting 
in a more youthful and magnetic life. 

The Bible is not only a young man's book but 
it is our official standard. As long as America 
remains a Christian nation the Bible must con- 
tinue as the light of its people. To ignore it 
is heathenism in the darkness of which virtue 
and liberty would not long survive. 

The Church is essential to every young man. 
He who faithfully and regularly goes to church 
receives benefits incalculable. The pulpit, as 
a rule, is supplied with earnest, well educated 
Christian men and the Church furnishes an 
education of the highest order and much of it 
is specially adapted to young men. 

The Church has a mission peculiarly its own. 
It is divine in its nature and perfect in pur- 
pose and plan. Other organizations teach and 
practice noble principles but they lack vital es- 
sentials and fail to meet man's highest needs. 
There is no substitute for the Church. 

That the Church falls below what it should 
be none can deny. It lacks zeal, activity and 
spiritual power. That it lacks these things is 
the fault of young men. Except in rare cases 
it is not the fault of the ministry, the aged or 
the women. Too many young men are dere- 
lict, disloyal and lazy. The Church is being 

244 



What Young Men Must Be. 

assailed on account of their shortcomings. The 
weakest point, the greatest breach in the church 
to-day is the void made by young men. The 
Church is as essential in the nation as the po- 
litical government, and it is as much the duty 
of young men to reverence it and labor in its 
behalf as it is to enlist in the cause of the nation 
in its time of peril. 

The Church teaches not only spiritual truths, 
but patriotism, morality, ethics, refinement and 
culture. It affords the only desirable level 
where all classes and conditions meet as equals. 
It brings together the aged and the young, the 
learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor 
and it is the greatest and most elevating social 
factor in the world. It creates the noblest in- 
centives, it promotes the deepest friendships 
and affords to young men and women the saf- 
est and most desirable ground on which to 
meet, enjoy each other's company, fall in love 
and marry under the skies. 

The Sabbath Day was made for man. Man 
needs it. The rest of one day in seven is 
just as essential to man's highest development 
as bread or sunlight or sleep. Man can do 
more work and better work by resting one day 
in seven than by continuous, unremitting plod. 
Without the rest of the Sabbath labor becomes 
degrading to morals and debilitating to body. 

It would be a wise movement to make of 

245 



Manhood's Morning. 

Saturday a universal holiday free from all 
general business and public service. All busi- 
ness that brings men in contact with each other 
and all manufacturing and general labor could 
easily be transacted in ifive days. This would 
give one day for domestic improvement, orna- 
mentation, repairing and arranging the affairs 
of home, and one day for rest. It would give 
one much needed off-day and an opportunity 
to enjoy, without encroachment, one Sabbath 
each week. Domestic and home affairs would 
thus receive a much needed attention, and the 
Sabbath Day would be relieved of much of that 
intense business pressure which now squeezes 
the life almost out of it. 

The Sabbath rriust not only be remembered, 
but it must be "kept holy.'' The influences 
of the Sabbath as a Holy Day are incalculably 
beneficial. It thus forms an oasis along the 
pathway of life. It inspires elevating and ser- 
ious meditation. "The Sabbath Day,'' says 
Emerson, "is the core of civilization." Sab- 
bath Days, when remembered and kept holy, 
are like the waves of the ocean which follow 
each other in graceful outline, lifting man 
above the level of ordinary life and carrying 
him nearer a higher and happier existence; 
but when forgotten or spent in desecration they 
are like the tempestuous billows which bewilder 
with their madness and hurry us on to destruc- 
tion. , 
246 



What Young Men Must Be. 

The Sabbath Day is one of the corner-stones 
of the RepubHc, a charter legacy coming to us 
as a part of the organic Hfe of the nation. 
Modern ideas and customs are however trans- 
forming it into a day of worldly amusement 
and dissipation. It is the duty of young men 
to arrest this tendency. From their ranks come 
most of the Sabbath breakers and it is their 
duty to maintain its sacredness. It should be 
used to promote natural affections and do- 
mestic fellowships ; as a time for reflection and 
rest and as a day to promote morality, charity, 
piety and Christian worship. 

To make clear the cardinal principles which 
underlie success in life, I have epitomized them 
into seven paragraphs, in the form of a pledge. 
I have endeavored to embody nothing that 
could well be left out, and left nothing out the 
absence of which would weaken a popular 
vow. It is adapted especially to young men 
between the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight. 

This pledge has been submitted to a large 
number of competent men in various sections 
of the nation and it has been pronounced emi- 
nently opportune and practical. 



247 



Manhood's Morning. 

YOUNG MAN'S PLEDGE. 

(i) I do hereby promise to faithfully and 
industriously endeavor to earn an honest liv- 
ing, to practice charity and liberality^ and if 
possible save a portion of my income, 

(2) / will lead a temperate life, and abstain 
from the use of tobacco in every form and from 
all alcoholic liquors as a beverage. 

(3) / will not use vulgar or profane lan- 
guage, nor indulge in low or indecent conver- 
sation. 

(4) / will strive to lead a pure life and in 
no way defile my body. 

(5) / will at all times reverence woman- 
hood and treat every woman with that respect 
due a sister or mother. 

(6) / will keep the Sabbath day holy by 
avoiding all desecration and unnecessary labor, 
and I do promise to make the attendance upon 
the services of some church a habit of my life. 

(7) / do promise to keep a copy of The 
Bible and familiarize myself with its contents. 

A pledge is simply an expressed plan of 
action to guide and direct the habits and efforts 
of life. Throughout all history, vows, prom- 
ises and pledges have formed the basis of the 

248 



What Young Men Must Be. 

noblest efiforts and highest achievements. Few 
things have done more for man than pledge 
signing. It brings the otherwise impossible 
within the range of the possible and makes 
difficult things easy. It is an act which God 
recognizes and they are scattered all through 
the Bible history. Indeed, the Bible might be 
well considered as God's pledge to men. The 
life of Wendell Phillips was a pledge and he 
said, ''Tens of thousands attest the value of the 
pledge. It never degraded ; it only lifted them 
to a higher plane." ''What we need,'' says the 
eminent Dr. Peloubet, "is a pledge signing re- 
vival." Over a million members of the Young 
People's Societies have signed a pledge during 
the past few years, and it has been to thousands 
of them not only a restraining but an inspiring 
and saving force. 

The pledge here presented is reasonable; 
it is not meddlesome in politics or religion. It 
forbids no real pleasure or joy. It will be easy 
to keep. It is easier to break off all bad habits 
than simply one. The failure of the temper- 
ance pledge so noticeable is due to the fact that 
too many habits remain untouched. It is eas- 
ier to quit both tobacco and liquor than either 
alone. 

A pledge that is comprehensive, and which 
complements what is sacred and vital in man- 
hood, secures the confidence and respect of 

249 



Manhood's Morning. 

those who sign it, and it becomes, of itself, a 
source of courage and strength. At best it is 
humihating to sign a pledge to be correct in 
some particular spot, but to promise to be 
clean, pure, square and upright, from head to 
foot, is a matter of which to be proud. A 
pledge embracing one idea tends to weaken 
from the time it is made, but a vow to change 
the whole life grows stronger and is finally in- 
vulnerable. Never were definite purposes and 
fixed determinations regarding habits of life, 
traits 'of character and plans of action more 
needed among young men than now. 

The signing and keeping of this pledge 
would bring benefits incalculable to young 
men. It would promote self-respect and the 
confidence of others. Confidence, genuine and 
whole souled, in boys and young men is the 
^^fatted calf' of civilization. Too many young 
men are as beggars at the door of popular opin- 
ion. To gain the confidence of the public is the 
first step to success. When young men secure 
the full confidence of their superiors in years, 
wealth and influence a bright day of prosperity 
and rejoicing will be at hand. 

The social efifects of a pure and consistent 
manhood are beyond measure. The most pow- 
erful disinfectant in the world is a pure young 
man. When young men become chaste and 
pure they will swarm forth, millions of them, 

250 



What Young Men Must Be. 

and inaugurate a new social era. Refined aes- 
thetic tastes will develop and more wholesome 
and elevating forms of amusements will be 
demanded. A new market will be opened for 
the products of artistic and cultivated handi- 
craft. A new prosperity, busy in supplying im- 
proved desires with improved supplies, will 
mark the steps of progress. 

Keeping such a pledge would reduce the 
amount of sickness to a minimum. The death 
rate among pure, temperate, worthily occupied 
men between fourteen and forty is extremely 
small. Sickness, to such, during these years, 
unless inherited or of the contagious sort, is 
extremely rare. By leading pure and temper- 
ate lives, the physical resistance against dis- 
ease, which is now so low among the intemper- 
ate and licentious, will become strong, minor 
ailments will disappear and the more serious 
and fatal diseases will respond much more read- 
ily to medical treatment. The delusion that it 
is the hand of Providence, instead of vice and 
wickedness, that strikes men down will be 
exploded. 

Men will become firmer in muscle, stronger 
in bone, richer in blood, brighter in eye, 
sweeter in temper, keener in intellect, more 
courageous in will and more manly and 
spiritual in heart. They will become more 
magnetic, their personality will be more richly 

251 



Manhood's Morning. 

endowed and gallantry will become a delight 
and chivalry a second nature. 

"The reason firm, the temperate will, 
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill." 

As men improve in habits hereditary influ- 
ences become recuperative and constructive 
and each succeeding generation find it easier 
to do right. That ideal — the genius of law — 
which makes it difficult to do wrong and easy 
to do right will become the natural heritage 
of citizenship. Good health and good man- 
ners might be made contagious. It is possi- 
ble for young men to so purify and enrich the 
elements of kinship that each succeeding gen- 
eration will not only be stronger and wiser, 
but will inherit a momentum, constantly in- 
creasing in force, towards physical, intellectual, 
moral and spiritual perfection. 

By adopting such principles as are set forth 
in this pledge young men will meet the de- 
mands of the hour and become prepared to 
lead in every department of thought and ac- 
tion. Pauperism, drunkenness, crime and 
misery will disappear. Men will become bet- 
ter educated and more refined, they will wear 
better clothes, use better language, seek new 
joys and cultivate higher attainments. They 
will grow more polite and sociable, more kind- 

252 



What Young Men Must Be. 

hearted and charitable. They will become 
more independent and wealth will become dif- 
fused among the masses. Men will love with 
a holier affection and enjoy a happier and more 
contented career. This pledge aims in the di- 
rection of man's best hopes, noblest aspirations 
and highest and most useful possibilities, and 
if universally signed and consistently lived by 
young men, the effect would be to elevate them 
to their normal, legitimate and God-intended 
sphere, and to hasten the glad day when the 
kingdoms of this world shall become the king- 
doms of our Lord and his Christ. 



253 



CHAPTER VIII. 
What Young Men Must Do. 



Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, 
and subdue it. God, 

''Because thou art 

The struggler; and from thy youth 
Thy humble and patient life 
Hath been a strife 

And battle for the truth; 

Nor hast thou paused nor halted, 
Nor ever in thy pride 
Turned from the poor aside, 
But with deed and word and pen 
Hast served thy fellow men ; 

Therefore art thou exalted !" 

Where should any being find its highest blessed- 
ness but in the legitimate exercise of its highest power. 

Mark Hopkins. 

It is no man's business whether he has genius or 
not; work he must. John Ruskin. 

The powers of man have not been exhausted. Noth- 
ing has been done by him that cannot be better done. 

Emerson. 

God never sent any man on a fool's errand. 

T. DeWitt Talmage. 

Ah ! the key of our life, that passes all words, opens 
all locks, is not I will, but / must — i must — I MUST 
and I do it. A. H. Clough. 

If our civilization stands, this will not be because it 
is incapable of destruction, but because its sons and 
daughters, roused by its dangers, rally to its defense. 

Samuel Lane Loomis. 

"Why, now I see there's mettle in thee, and even 
from this instant, do build on thee a better opinion 
than ever before." 

256 



CHAPTER VIII. 

WHAT YOUNG MEN MUST DO. 

EVERY young man in America was 
made for a purpose and that purpose 
was to do something. Not one Hves 
who has not a mission, a duty to per- 
form. Whether his talents be one or five, con- 
spicuous or obscure, strong or weak, they 
were given him, not to bury, but to exercise 
and improve. 

Young men must act for themselves. Each 
generation of young men are the pioneers of a 
new age. It always has been and always will 
be so. The rest of the world keeps step with 
its young men. When they march forward 
the world moves on ; when they aim high and 
strive upward civilization advances ; when they 
are loyally enlisted in the cause of right hap- 
piness and safety are assured to the people. 

What is true of the world at large is dis- 
tinctively true of America, and it was never so 
true of America as it is to-day. Emerson 
said: "As goes America so goes the world;" 
and another has added, with no less truth but 

17 257 



Manhood's Morning. 

with still greater force : ''As go the young men 
of America so goes America." If these state- 
ments are true prophetic wisdom the future 
history of the world and the destinies of the 
human race are within the grasp of the young 
men of America. I accept the proposition as 
a sacred verity, and believe that the uppermost 
need of the hour is that young men awake to 
the duties and responsibilities which these 
facts impose. 

It is useless for young men to sit down and 
grumble and lament over our business, finan- 
cial and industrial systems, or our social, po- 
litical or religious conditions. The wrongs and . 
evils and unjust conditions that exist, and 
which have become a part of our national life, 
will never be argued nor resolved out of ex- 
istence. The only remedy for these conditions 
is for young men to enter the various fields of 
action determined that better conditions shall 
prevail, and that the world shall receive the 
benefit of their strength, vigor and enthusiasm. 

It is useless for young men to expect help 
from, the rich and influential. It is worse than 
useless for them to wait for anybody's shoes. 
They need not hope to supplant or frustrate 
their superiors. They must plan and build 
their own fortunes and do it by reaching farth- 
er, climbing higher, digging deeper and striv- 

258 



What Young Men Must Do. 

ing more unselfishly and constantly than those 
who are ahead of them. 

Too much is being done already for many 
young men. Help is the last thing they need. 
Nothing spoils them so quickly. Thousands 
have been ruined by learning to depend upon 
others instead of themselves. The world 
should be laid upon their shoulders. The du- 
ties and perplexities of the world — its suffer- 
ings and its wrongs, its hatreds and oppres- 
sions, its ignorance and filth, its fossilisms 
and its perversions — should be heaped upon 
and piled around young men and they should 
not find pure air, comfort, rest, peace nor even 
sleep or bread until they earn it by digging and 
fighting their way out and trampling these 
things under their feet. 

Young men must not stand upon the brink 
of life's business channels and shrink and 
shiver into despair, but they must plunge in, 
and through their own industry, grit and 
brains overcome all obstacles and win success. 

Too many stand and beg for the crumbs that 
fall from the tables of the rich, and starve as 
they deserve. Young men are in duty bound 
to aim high and not be too easily pleased. 
Too many lives are wasted in hewing wood 
and drawing water and doing things out of 
date. Thousands seek work for their unedu- 
cated muscle while the world is looking for 



Manhood's Morning. 

brains. They hunt in the dark and dingy cor- 
ners of enterprise for jobs at starvation wages 
while the world is offering comfortable salaries 
and honor to men of worth and sagacity. 

That so many young men find it difficult to 
secure employment is not always a cruel fate. 
Their ill success is often only a -whip to spur 
them on to something better. When they get 
behind and separated from where they belong 
they must expect to suffer. When young men 
are thrown out upon their own resources it is 
simply the American Eagle stirring her nest 
and forcing ''Young America'' to shift for 
himself, to manage his own affairs and live in- 
dependent of others. 

Seeking employment in factories, stores and 
offices needs to be discouraged. Too many 
spend their lives in routine, automatic service, 
like so many machines. Such avocations lack 
permanency and tend to sap the higher quali- 
ties of mind and character. They rob men of 
the art and ambition required to venture into 
the more independent realms of action. By so 
doing they grow narrow and timid and dis- 
trustful of themselves, and stripped of their 
native pluck and ambition they sink their indi- 
viduality and ability in the industrial monopo- 
lies of the nation. Every man should have a 
genuine and direct interest in his life's work — 
in its profits, in its management and in its gen- 

260 



What Young Men Must Do. 

eral success. The hands of men should not 
only be employed but their brains and their 
hearts — their might — should have a living 
interest in what they do. 

Young men must work. Persistent, con- 
centrated work is the price of genuine success. 
Achievement is too often looked upon as the 
result of genius or luck. Genius is greatly 
overestimated and luck comes to but few. 
Ninety-nine young mien in every hundred 
must depend for success upon their own ener- 
gies. ''A genius for hard work is the best 
kind of genius." 

It is the general impression that orators, 
poets, inventors and others do not have to apply 
themselves. This belief has done much harm. 
It is claimed that Demosthenes, the world's 
greatest orator, had no talent whatever, but 
owed his success entirely to hard work. He 
was sickly born, nicknamed on account of ugli- 
ness, and stammered. He shaved the hair from 
one-half of his head to enforce seclusion in a 
cave; filled his mouth with pebbles to correct 
stuttering ; practiced daily before a mirror ; cop- 
ied and recopied the History of Thucydides 
eight times and committed it to memory ; stud- 
ied under all the great orators of his time and 
spent eight years in preparing ^'the greatest 
oration of the greatest orator of the world." 

Lord Brougham allowed himself only four 

261 



Manhood's Morning. 

hours' sleep. He recopied his greatest speech 
in the House of Lords twenty times and prac- 
ticed it for many weeks. Cicero was under 
constant drill for thirty years and practiced 
daily before some critic or friend ; his life was 
an incessant drudgery. Pericles never went 
into the street except to the Forum or Senate 
and dined out only once during his life. Ed- 
mund Burke disclaimed any superior talent. 
He worked constantly and would have his 
speeches printed two or three times privately 
for revision before giving them to the public. 
It was said of William Pitt that perhaps no 
man, except Cicero, ever submitted to an equal 
amount of drudgery. Chesterfield was almost 
infinite in painstaking and was an indefati- 
gable worker. Lord Chatham went through 
Bailey's large dictionary twice, carefully study- 
ing each word. He translated all the orations 
of Cicero and practiced daily before a mirror. 
William Cobbett said: 'Thave not during my 
life spent more than thirty-five minutes at table, 
including all the meals of the day.'' 

Daniel Webster worked twelve hours daily 
for fifty years. He studied the dictionary al- 
most daily for twenty years. He was an early 
riser and his classical sentences, now so famil- 
iar, were revised over and over again and cost 
him endless toil. Patrick Henry is reported as 
being lazy, but the fact remains that he had a 

262 



What Young Men Must Do. 

large library, was an accomplished Latin and 
Greek scholar and studied several hours daily. 
Rufus Choate was a slave to the classics and 
for forty years not a day passed without an 
effort to perfect himself in speech. Henry 
Clay made it a rule of his life to talk daily to 
the cattle, the cornfields and the woods. 
Charles Sumner studied much day and night 
all his life. Alexander Hamilton said : ''When 
I have a subject in hand I study it profoundly. 
Day and night it is before me." 

John Wesley rose at four, summer and win- 
ter; preached twice daily for fifty years and 
rode over 270,000 miles during his life. Adam 
Clarke spent forty years on his Commentary. 
Noah Webster labored for thirty-six years 
upon his dictionary and crossed the ocean twice 
to gather materials. Gibbon spent twenty-six 
years on his ''Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire." Bancroft labored for twenty-six 
years on his "History of the United States." 
Motley, although a classical literary man, spent 
ten years in diligent study before even begin- 
ning the history that made him famous. Dar- 
win was not quick to think or write, but his pa- 
tience and industry were unbounded. He said : 
"A man who dares waste one hour of time has 
not discovered the value of life." Charles 
Dickens was an inveterate slave to hard work. 
Milton rose at four in winter and at five in 

263 



Manhood's Morning. 

summer. Massillon recopied some of his ser- 
mons twenty times. 

Says Edgar Allan Poe: ''Most writers- 
poets in especial — prefer having it understood 
that they compose by a species of fine frenzy, 
an ecstatic intuition; and would positively 
shudder at letting the public take a peep be- 
hind the scenes.. . — in a word, at the wheels 
and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting, the 
step ladders and demon-traps, the cock's feath- 
ers, the red paint and the black patches, which 
in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, consti- 
tute the properties of the literary histrio/' Poe 
is considered America's greatest poetic genius 
and 'The Raven'' is his best production; yet 
of this he himself wrote : "No one point in its 
composition is referable either to accident or 
intuition, — the work proceeded step by step 
to its completion, with the precision and rigid 
consequence of a mathematical problem." 

Virgil labored eleven years on his ^neid 
and then considered it imperfect. Thomas 
Gray spent seven years in writing his "Elegy 
in a Country Church Yard." The fact that 
Bryant wrote his "Thanatopsis" at the age of 
eighteen everybody knows; that he revised 
corrected, transposed and rewrote it no less 
than one hundred times before giving it to the 
public is known to but few. Goethe, the Ger- 

264 



What Young Men Must Do. 

man poet and author, was a great genius but 
a greater prodigy at hard work. 

Sir Isaac Newton said: ''Whatever service 
I have done the pubHc was not owing to any 
extraordinary sagacity, but solely to industry 
and patient thought/' Thomas A. Edison has 
taken out over seven hundred patents but 
claims to have made only one discovery 
through accident. He worked eighteen to 
twenty hours daily for seven months to perfect 
the phonograph. He experimented patiently 
and methodically with i,8oo substances in solv- 
ing the problem of Roentgen's X rays. His 
success has been due to ''an infinite capacity for 
taking pains.'' 

The Atlantic cable cost Cyrus W. Field 
nearly nineteen years of anxious watching and 
ceaseless toil. He said: "Often my heart has 
been ready to sink. Many times when wander- 
ing in the forests of Newfoundland, in the pelt- 
ing rain, or on the decks of ships stormy nights 
alone, far from home, I have almost accused 
myself of madness and folly.'' George Ste- 
phenson spent fifteen years in perfecting the 
locomotive. Watt worked for thirty years on 
the condensing engine. Hard rubber cost 
Goodyear ten years of study, poverty and ridi- 
cule. John Hunter allowed himself only four 
hours' sleep. Michael Angelo slept in his 
clothes when engaged in his greatest works and 

265 



Manhood's Morning. 

kept fcM3d within reach eating a bite at a time. 
Mendelssohn, Handel and Beethoven were all 
prodigies at incessant work. No theologian 
ever labored more diligently than did Benjamin 
West in evolving his Bible paintings. 

There is danger of young men losing the 
art of work. God has put us here to labor. 
Before each life stretches its highest possibili- 
ties and to reach the summit is the duty of all. 
Neither genius nor luck alone will prevail. 
Work must win the race. There are no sine- 
cures in life's highway. Everyone must work 
with hands, brain and strength. Success is 
reached by being active, awake, ahead of the 
crowd ; by aiming high, pushing ahead hon- 
estly, diligently, patiently ; by climbing, dig- 
ging, saving ; by forgetting the past, using the 
present, trusting in the future; by honoring 
God, having a purpose, fainting not, determin- 
ing to win, and striving to the end. 

"Manhood, like gold, is tested in the furnace, 
A fire that purifies is fierce and strong, 
Rare statues gain art's ideal of perfection 
By skillful stroke of chisel wielded long." 

Yovmg men must destroy pessimism. Popu- 
lar opinions regarding life, happiness, success 
and progress are barnacled with cynical and 
pessimistic ideas. There is a gloomy, sour im- 
pression, almost universal, that the world is as 

266 



What Young Men Must Do. 

happy and mankind as healthy and prosperous 
as God intended they should be; that all the 
great men are dead; that the good things are 
intended for the few and that the majority of 
mankind would not amount to anything under 
any conditions. Many believe that 

''Man to misery is born ! 

Born to drudge, and sweat and suffer." 

Not long since a well known speaker de- 
clared that ''We cannot expect men of the pres- 
ent day to equal the great masters of the past.'' 
When a good or great man dies we are apt 
to believe that 

''He was a man, take him for all in all, 
I shall not look upon his like again," 

thus tacitly acknowledging that the human 
race, like the ancient wonders of the world, is 
tottering to ruin. Such pessimistic ideas are 
a travesty upon manhood and gnaw at the very 
vitals of hope, ambition and success. 

America will yet lead the world in unfold- 
ing God's plans in blessing humanity. The 
greatest men are yet to be born and the grand- 
est achievements are yet to be wrought. And 
why should it not be so? Has God lost His 
omnipotence and His love for the world ? Has 
mankind buried its genius and talents and 

267 



Manhood's Morning. 

have its hands forgotten their cunning? Have 
earth's best harvest fields been garnered, its 
fairest beauties plucked, and its richest treas- 
ures absorbed? Is the world's greatest handi- 
craft an ancient ruin? Are its brightest and 
best men ashes and dust? A thousand times 
no ! The world is yet in its infancy ; the glory 
of a new era is before us; a bright, happy, 
prosperous age — The Ki^igdom of God — will 
surely come. 

America is destined to fill a mission and win 
a greatness distinctively her own. Neither 
her own proud past nor the trophies of foreign 
lands can measure her future progress. 

It is impossible to perpetuate the eloquence 
of Demosthenes, Webster, Cicero, Burke, Ev- 
erett or O'Connell in cold type. But greater 
orators than these will yet live and their words 
will inspire the hearts of future generations. 
Wilberforce, Washington, Jefferson and Ad- 
ams gave to the nation the principles of liberty, 
and Lincoln, Phillips, Sumner and Grant have 
established these principles in the land, but 
greater statesmen and heroes than these must 
yet teach liberty to be just and generous, wise 
and contented. 

The names of Hippocrates, Pare, Jenner, 
Pasteur, Hunter, Rush, Gross and Agnew are 
written high upon the scroll of fame in Medi- 
cine, but physicians will soon live, infinitely 

268 



What Young Men Must Do. 

more correct in diagnosis and treatment than 
were these Nestors of their age. Philosophy 
is proud of the names of Bacon, Socrates, 
Plato and Franklin, but wisdom greater than 
they even dreamed is already broadcast over 
the land. Newton, Young, Comte and Spen- 
cer, in the field of Science, and Faraday, Priest- 
ley, Berthollet and Davy, in the realm of Chem- 
istry, simply stood upon the first levels of 
earth's exhaustless mines whose depths shall 
yet be explored and made subject to man's 
power and will. 

"Earth and Ocean, Flame and Wind 

Have unnumbered secrets still, 
To be ransacked when you will, 

For the service of mankind; 
Science is a child as yet, 

And her power and scope will grow, 
And her triumphs in the future 

Shall diminish toil and woe." 

The world's best music and poetry belong to 
the future. The productions of the gifted 
Haydn, the wonderful Mendelssohn, the mag- 
nificent Beethoven and the incomparable Mo- 
zart are all exotic to the American ear and cli- 
mate. Human experiences have been sung in 
rhyme and metre by Homer, Virgil, Shakes- 
peare, Milton, Tennyson, Burns, Longfellow, 
Bryant, Lowell, Cowper, Whittier and Holmes, 

269 



Manhood's Morning. 

but they echo the past rather than inspire the 
present or illumine the future. Song and 
poetry, more than laws, shape history but they 
must be ahead of, not behind, the times. Every 
nation and every age require their own song 
and rhyme. No matter how exquisite and 
transcendent they may be, time will mar their 
vital essence. America will yet produce a mu- 
sic and verse of its own, attuned to its own 
clime, suited to the age that inspires them and 
cheering the pathway of mankind to the high- 
est summits. 

The works of Dickens, Scott, Hugo, Cooper, 
Hawthorne, Collins, Thackeray, Eliot and Irv- 
ing are all antiquated and out of date. Their 
vernacular, and the conditions in which they 
were plotted have become faded and obscure. 
Nature needs clothing in new beauties and 
Nature's heart needs to be touched and quick- 
ened by new themes. 

Watt, Stephenson, Fulton, Whitney, Howe, 
Field, Morse, McCormick, Edison and others 
have revealed a new civilization, yet invention 
was never so prolific and startling and the 
future is inconceivably promising. 

For four centuries, led by Pestalozzi, Froe- 
bel, JefJerson and Horace Mann and a legion 
of co-workers, education has been climbing 
up through strata of superstition, error and 
doubt but it is now ready for a new life. The 

270 



What Young Men Must Do. 

conquests of learning have scarcely begun but 
knowledge will yet fill the earth as the waters 
cover the deep. Even the works of Jesus 
Christ will be surpassed by those who shall fol- 
low after Him. He healed the sick, restored 
the blind and deaf and dumb ; He made the lame 
to walk and the dead to rise and live again. 
Yet it was He who said : ''He that believeth on 
Me the works that I do he shall do also, and 
greater works than these shall he do/' 

Future progress will represent the masses 
rather than the few. ''It seems very certain,*' 
says Phillips Brooks, "that the world is to 
grow better and richer in the future, ^ ^ * 
not by the magnificent achievements of the 
highly gifted few, but by the patient faithful- 
ness of the one-talented many.'' More recip- 
rocal and dififused conditions between the 
gifted and less favored are destined to prevail. 
The parable of the talents not only shows the 
intimate relation between the gifted and ordi- 
nary, but also that the five talented can and 
the one talented must fulfill their mission. All 
classes will recognize the common brother- 
hood, all will aid the common good and all 
will secure a deserved share of success. 

Young men must endure and tra^ucend fogy- 
ism. The world is as full of fogyism as water 
is of microbes and there are a million in every 
drop. Fogyism is the self-imposed jury which 

271 



Manhood's Morning. 

sits in judgment and, without even a mock 
trial, condemns and pronounces sentence upon 
its victims. It is as old as sin and resembles it 
closely. It has followed civilization from the 
beginning and is alive and lusty as ever. For 
sixty centuries it has cried : ''It won't work/' 
'It can't be done." "Let good enough alone." 
"I told you so" — free to all. From the moss- 
covered heights of self-content it sings: 

"Stand ye still ! ye restless nations, 
And be happy where you are. 
Change is rash and never wise 
If ye meddle we will mar." 

Fogyism has ridiculed, scoffed, pooh- 
poohed, hissed and persecuted almost every 
good man and every improvement since the 
world began. No penalty is too base for its 
prejudice, no missile is too vile for its hate. 
It will fire anathemas from the pulpit or wrath 
from the platform; it will hurl calumny from 
the pew or rotten eggs from the mob. 

''Truths would you teach to save a sinking land, 
All fear, none aid you, and few understand." 

Long before the rivers were channels of 
commerce they served to protect new nations 
from old enemies ; mountains have simply been 
fences to separate fogyisms too desperate to 

272 



What Young Men Must Do. 

live neighbors ; oceans have been too narrow to 
insure safe lands of refuge to men with 
thoughts and opinions of their own. 

Gahleo, after inventing the clock pendulum, 
the telescope, and devoting his life for others, 
was forced to bow his venerable head, whitened 
by seventy winters, and ''abjure, curse and de- 
test the aforesaid errors and heresies." Old 
and blind and imprisoned, he exclaimed: ''My 
name is erased from the book of the living.'' 
''The Revolution of the Celestial Orbs," cost 
Copernicus twenty-two years of labor but he 
dared not publish it. Roger Bacon was perse- 
cuted for his wisdom, accused of magic; his 
books were burned in public, and he was im- 
prisoned for ten years. 

For conceiving steam navigation, DeCaus 
was pronounced insane and thrown into the 
mad-house. When John Fitch invented a 
steamboat, the public, not even Franklin, 
would notice it. He sat down and wrote: 
''Some more powerful man will gtt fame and 
riches from my invention" and then committed 
suicide. Robert Fulton tells us that during the 
entire time he was building his steamboat: 
''Never did a single encouraging remark, a 
bright hope or a warm wish cross my path/' 

The steam engine cost Watt almost martyr- 
dom. He said: "The struggles I have had 
with natural difficulties and with ignorance, 

i8 273 



Manhood's Morning. 

prejudices and villainies of mankind, have been 
very great. ^ ^ ^^ There is nothing more 
foolish than inventing/' Rapid locomotion 
was strongly condemned. Riding rapidly 
''would injure people." ''They would swallow 
wind ;'' "lose their breath.'' "The cattle would 
be frightened to death," and Parliament was 
requested to limit speed to nine miles an 
hour. United States Chancellor Livingston 
wrote an article proving railroads utterly im- 
possible. 

The use of gas was ridiculed by the great 
chemist, Davy, and Wollaston, the scientist, 
said: "They might as well attempt to use a 
slice out of the moon." 

Demonstrating the circulation of the blood 
cost Dr. Harvey many of his patients and the 
physicians violently assailed him, not one over 
forty years old admitting the truth of his dis- 
covery. Vaccination cost Jenner sixteen years 
experimenting and vehement opposition ; so- 
cieties being started and journals printed to op- 
pose it. The eminent discoverer. Priestly, had 
his house pillaged, its contents burned by a 
mob and he was forced to flee from his coun- 
try. 

Columbus encountered incessant ridicule 
and opposition. His crew assailed him to the 
verge of mutiny, he was chained on board his 

274 



What Young Men Must Do. 

own ship, imprisoned by his own countrymen 
and died poor, neglected and broken-hearted. 

Charles V. in an edict said : ''No one shall 
print, write, copy, keep, conceal, sell, buy, or 
give any book written by Martin Luther, or 
any other heretic/' Another edict read : ''All 
heretics shall be put to death." The churches 
were closed against John Wesley and on sev- 
eral occasions he had to flee for his life. Fox, 
the founder of the Society of Friends, was im- 
prisoned. William Penn, a prominent mem- 
ber, was disowned by his parents, ostracised 
and sent to jail; a clergyman wrote a book 
against the sect under the rancorous title of 
^'Hell Let Loose." Sunday-schools were at first 
opposed. When Miss Lathrop started one in 
Connecticut it was turned out of the church, 
then out of the school house, then out of the 
court house ; but she kept on and in fifty years 
this school had sent out twenty-six ministers 
and hundreds of Christian workers ; H. P. 
Haven, "The Model Superintendent," being, 
as a small boy, a charter scholar. 

Fogyism has always opposed liberty and in- 
dependence. When the colonists declared for 
liberty and said : "We mutually pledge to each 
other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred 
honor," it aroused the most intense antagonism 
of the most powerful nation in the world. Tri- 
umph over slavery in England cost Wilber- 

275 



Manhood's Morning. 

force nineteen years of ^^slander, insult, bitter- 
ness of hope deferred, the coldness and treach- 
ery of friends and the persistent malice of en- 
emies/^ Freedom in America made Wendell 
Phillips ''as an outcast ^ ^ ^ deserted 
and avoided, as though stricken with the lep- 
rosy;'' it made Garrison a prisoner, a scape- 
goat and a target for the mob; it cost Lin- 
coln martyrdom and the Nation the life's blood 
of hundreds of thousands of its noblest and. 
bravest men. 

Were it not for young men progressive en- 
terprise would almost cease. The old, as a 
rule, are skeptical and oppose new ideas. Every 
generation and every life develops a new his- 
tory. 

"New occasions teach new duties ; 
Time makes ancient good uncouth; 
They must upward, still, and onward, 
Who would keep abreast of Truth. 
Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires 1 
We, ourselves, must Pilgrims be. 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 
Through the desperate winter sea. 
Nor attempt the Future's portal 
With the Past's blood-rusted key." 

Difficulties and oppositions develop the he- 
roic in young men. But for the husks the 
prodigal would never have feasted on fatted 
calf. Hisses from the crowd kindled the fires 

276 



What Young Men Must Do. 

of eloquence in Demosthenes. ^'O, what a 
stupid ass V from his teacher turned a lazy 
boy into Adam Clarke. The ridicule and sar- 
casm of Parliament made Disraeli the greatest 
man in England. Bitter opposition was an 
inspiration to Martin Luther; the more angry 
he was the more zealously could he preach, 
pray and work. Bedford Jail and Bunyan 
wrote 'Tilgrims' Progress'' ; neither could do 
it alone. ^'There is no possible success/' said 
Dr. Holmes, without some opposition as a ful- 
crum." 

Men are not roused into action by recom- 
pense, pleasures, hope of ease, or sugar-plums 
of any sort, but by trials, abnegation, hard- 
ships and even martyrdom. Adversity awak- 
ens talent; the greater the obstacles the more 
earnest the zeal; the stronger the opposition 
the more heroic and determined is the life of 
the true man. 

Young men must perfect the health and 
physique of the race. Young men only can 
do this. From two to five generations of pure, 
undefiled manhood would produce a race with- 
out an inherited blemish. America will never 
be great or good, strong or wise until its peo- 
ple are pure blooded, pure brained and healthy. 
Every fireside is interested in this subject. 
''Come, let us live for our children,'' said the 
great teacher, Froebel. ''Begin to train your 

277 



Manhood's Morning. 

children twenty years before they are born/' 
said the poet-physician, Holmes. Too much 
stress is placed upon motherhood, and not 
enough upon the fatherhood of posterity. Sen- 
timent demands pure mothers, but God de- 
mands pure fathers. It is the ''sins of the 
fathers'' which blight the children. It is when 
the fathers eat ''sour grapes" that the teeth 
of the children are "set on edge." "The glory 
of a child is its father," said Solomon. Noth- 
ing counts for more than a reliable pedigree, 
and nowdiere is it more consistent in its mani- 
festations than in our children. Most children 
are like their parents — only more so. 

The utmost effort is being made to improve 
the stock, species, or varieties among animals, 
fruits, vegetables and flowers, and why not give 
as much attention to the improvement and per- 
fection of the highest type of creation — man? 
It is as essential that the people be taught to 
know and respect the laws concerning he- 
redity, as those referring to political economy- 
It is as important to know how to preserve 
good health and prevent disease, as it is to 
master some craft whereby to secure food, 
clothing and shelter. 

It is for young men, and not for the doctors, 
to drive disease, pain, deformity and premature 
death from the land. Every child born healthy 
proves that all may, accidents excepted, be so 

278 



What Young Men Must Do. 

blessed, and such will be the case when the 
bodies of young men become the temples of 
purity that God intended that they should be. 
The race will not suffer sickness, pain and de- 
formity any longer than they are necessary and 
self-inflicted. 

Young men can decree that there shall be 
no more consumption, scrofula, specific ulcers, 
cancers, loathsome catarrh, insanity and imbe- 
cility; no diseases too vile to mention — no 
wicked and hellish hereditary blush stamped 
upon a daughter's cheek, and no alluring and 
suggestive twinkle in her eye ; no inherited ap- 
petites to weaken the will of a son and no 
father's sin to drag him down to ruin. 

Too little attention is paid to physical de- 
velopment. Religion excepted, health is the 
highest concern. Indeed, religion and health 
are wedded virtues. Much of the sin in the 
world is disease and much of the religion we 
meet is good health. Health is the vital prin- 
ciple of bliss and the chief source of success. 
A healthy stomach and a liver that never com- 
plains render a man, not only happy, but force- 
ful and invulnerable. No seriously defective 
young man should ever marry^ and there 
should be laws regulating such marriages. 
An era of common sense and conscience should 
supplant prevailing sentimentalisms in love af- 
fairs. The time has come when, not only 

279 



Manhood's Morning. 

health, but the sensibiHties, faculties and char- 
acter are born rather than acquired — when all 
are severely tested and tried and only the fit- 
test survive. 

Pure blood should paint the cheeks, and an 
upright fatherhood should inspire the heart of 
every boy and girl born upon American soil. 
It is criminal for young men to flagrantly ig- 
nore these subjects as they do. It is the duty 
of young men to become the fathers of an im- 
proved race — of children inheriting all the ad- 
vantages of healthful vigor; strong in muscle 
and elastic in limb, clear of eye and magnetic 
of expression, symmetrical in faculties and 
temperament, modest in manners and cultured 
in habits ; with minds sound and well poised 
and with wills kindly set but invincible as 
steel. 

"Nor love nor honor, wealth nor power, 
Can give the heart a cheerful hour, 
When HEALTH is lost. Be timely wise; 
With HEALTH all taste of pleasure flies." 

Young men must destroy ignorance. As a 
cause of misery, degradation and unhappiness, 
ignorance stands first. It is more destructive 
than poverty or disease, and ruins more lives 
than temptation an(i willfulness combined. 
Through lack of knowledge the people perish. 
Next to sin, ignorance is the world's curse. 

280 



What Young Men Must Do. 

Squalor, sickness and premature death are lit- 
tle else than the fruits of ignorance. Accord- 
ing to statistics, ignorance, in the form of in- 
competency and inexperience, causes more fail- 
ures in business than extravagance, neglect, 
competition, speculation, fraud and unwise 
credit combined. And what is true in the mat- 
ter of business is still more true in professional 
life and in the realm of labor. Ignorance is 
darkness, weakness, failure and ruin, while 
knowledge is light, strength, success, oppor- 
tunity and life. Ignorance is God's worst 
enemy and Satan's best friend. And to none 
is ignorance so great a curse, and to none is 
knowledge so great a boon as to young men. 
It is the duty of every one to thoroughly detest 
Ignorance. 

The progress and success of the future will 
be intellectual. Education, culture, science, 
art, ethics and refinement will create and es- 
tablish demand and supply. There is no knowl- 
edge that is not power. Progress is simply 
more light. A foolish notion exists that ''the 
world is growing weaker and wiser." Such a 
thing is impossible ; only ignorance can impair ; 
genuine wisdom always improves, edifies and 
constructs. 

Ignorance is a chief cause of business de- 
pressions and hard times. The labor, financial 
and other political and social questions are 

281 



Manhood's Morning. 

largely battles between ignorance and knowl- 
edge. Nothing will bring substantial and per- 
manent prosperity so surely as the spread of 
education and culture. Indeed, there is no 
other way to establish permanent and genuine 
thrift. Only as knowledge, in its broadest and 
best sense, increases, will the capacity to desire 
and enjoy and the ability to produce multiply, 

The demand for intellectual workers is 
boundless and will never be fully supplied, 
while the demand for manual labor is limited 
and constantly growing less. With new 
knowledge come new abilities and powers, 
new comforts and new necessities. As a rule, 
it is easier for an enlarged mind to secure its 
increased desires than for a benighted, aimless 
intellect to obtain its bare necessities. Labor, 
to the former, is strength and development, to 
the latter, compulsory drudgery. 

To multiply desires, comforts and necessities, 
and make it possible for all to secure them, is a 
potent factor in civilization and enlightenment. 
Intellectual needs are infinitely more prolific 
than physical needs; indeed, more knowledge 
is "Nature's Remedy'' for over production 
and idle men and mills. God and Nature pro- 
vide abundantly everywhere, and in nothing 
are they so liberal as when contributing to the 
comforts and desires of mankind. It is not 
genuine Christian discipline to needlessly deny 

282 



What Young Men Must Do. 

ourselves any good thing. Excessive economy 
in the use of that which is good for us will never 
bring prosperity. Stinginess can only stop 
the wheels of enterprise. The close-fisted miser 
is usually a social vagabond, if not an infidel. 
God wants all his children to enjoy far more 
of the good things around them than they are 
ready to believe or admit. 

Not only does knowledge increase desires 
and the ability to gratify these desires, but it 
makes men more aesthetic, refined and discrim- 
inating. It creates a demand for a better stand- 
ard of quality. To know of a good thing is to 
want it. To understand quality causes a de- 
mand for the best. Mankind will never do it- 
self justice until it secures everything it needs, 
and until all these things are the best that hu- 
man skill, industry and genius can produce. 

As ignorance is destroyed and knowledge 
increases, supply and demand will undergo a 
revolution. With improved intellectual con- 
ceptions the people will demand better clothes 
and houses, better markets and harvests, better 
milk and butter, bread and beefsteak, better 
horses and cattle, farms and farmers, fruits and 
flowers, better roads and methods of locomo- 
tion, better newspapers and books, teachers and 
leaders, better doctors and medicine, better 
manhood and morals, mind and manners, better 
fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons 

283 



Manhood's Morning. 

and daughters, better churches and creeds, 
preachers and Christians, better laws and law- 
yers, officials and citizens, better work and bet- 
ter pay, better employers and employes, better 
homes and better hearts, better hopes and bet- 
ter joys. The millennium will be little else 
than that good time when knowledge shall fill 
the earth, and when every human need will be 
met and when every man will be liberally sup- 
plied from the abundance. 

Young men must destroy poverty. There is 
a poverty in our nation constantly growing 
more widespread and organic, which is slavish, 
unjust and oppressive. It is too true that pov- 
erty has become the menace of all and the inev- 
itable doom of a vast number. Our nation dur- 
ing four centuries has accumulated property 
to the value of nearly $100,000,000,000. But 
in dealing it out to her children, practically the 
whole amount has been given to one million 
men, leaving over sixty million with only a 
pittance. Seventy per cent, of the wealth of the 
nation has been given to 200,000 men. Each 
one of these men, on an average, hold enough 
possessions, either active or latent, to support 
one thousand of his neighbors and, at the same 
time, a majority of these neighbors are strug- 
gling against poverty and must live and die 
poor in spite of themselves. 

Not only is the wealth in the hands of a few, 

284 



What Young Men Must Do. 

but we are fostering a system of industrial 
bondage. Said Hon. H. A. Herbert, formerly 
Secretary of the Navy, in a recent address : 
''We are entering upon an era of vast enter- 
prises that threaten to occupy, to the exclusion 
of others, all the avenues of human progress.'' 
Capitalized corporations, gigantic enterprises, 
mammoth stores, railroads reaching from lakes 
to gulf, or from ocean to ocean, under one man- 
agement, industrial plants with millions of capi- 
tal, protected by trusts, combinations and law, 
are rapidly taking possession of the field and 
smaller enterprises are destined to disappear. 
"Human wit," says Mr. Herbert, ''seems un- 
able to devise, without dangerously curtailing 
the natural liberty of the citizen, any plan for 
the prevention of these monopolies, and the ef- 
fect is the accumulation of vast wealth by the 
few and the narrowing opportunities of the 
many." 

The love of money is the master passion of 
the American people. Wealth is our aristoc- 
racy ; it rules in politics, makes our laws and is 
the octopus in manufacturing and commerce. 
Wealth has grown aggressive, heartless and 
over-powering, while poverty has become em- 
barrassed, passive and weak. Even honest toil 
— the curse of honest sweat — at fair wages has 
become a luxury that Is denied to many. There 
are multitudes of men and women, represent- 

285 



Manhood's Morning, 

ing the choice fibre of the race, who are as 
veritable slaves to the sordid demands of wealth 
as were the human chattels that hoed the corn 
and picked the cotton in the ''Sunny South" in 
''Sixty-one." In form of government we are a 
republic, in practical experience we are a des- 
potism; in religion we are Christians, in busi- 
ness we are cannibals. 

Nothing is more certain than that the inher- 
ited and legitimate road to life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness is being narrowed and 
obstructed by the power of concentrated wealth. 
It is also true that no people are so embarrassed 
and humiliated by poverty as Americans; and 
in no land is poverty so unnecessary, so out of 
place or so abominable as in the United States. 

"Wealth in the dross is death, but life diffused; 
As poison heals, in just proportions used; 
In heap, like ambergris, a stink it lies, 
But, well dispersed, is incense to the skies. 

"The danger," said Dr. Howard Crosby, 
"which threatens the uprooting of society, the 
demolition of civil institutions, the destruction 
of liberty, and the desolation of all, is that which 
comes from the rich and powerful classes in the 
community." At a time when Benjamin Har- 
rison had cause to ponder well his words he 
said : "I do not believe that a republic can live 
and prosper whose wage-earners do not re- 

286 



What Young Men Must Do. 

ceive enough to make life comfortable ; who do 
not have some upward avenue of hope before 
them." 

America is the richest nation on earth, and 
its rapid development and increase of wealth 
have no parallel. Above a livelihood, we are 
increasing in riches $3,000,000,000 annually, or 
over $7,000,000 daily; more than $2,000 for 
every boy that becomes a man. Our nation is 
capable of supporting 1,000,000,000 people, and 
its present population could be supported by 
four of its largest States, leaving forty States 
unoccupied. It might be said that the sun never 
sets upon our possessions ; before his last rays 
fade from the western isles of Alaska the 
dawning sunlight falls upon the pines of Maine. 

In such a nation there should be a constant 
and inexhaustible demand for young men. 
There should be abundant room for all, work 
for every pair of hands and a just reward for 
every honest effort. It should be possible for 
every young man to, not only earn a livelihood, 
but to develop and accumulate and, at a proper 
time get married under favorable prospects, to 
support his family and rear his children re- 
spectably, to build a home and eventually pay 
for it, to furnish it with all the comforts of 
modern convenience, to supply the library with 
the best of books and the centre-table with the 
best of magazines, to keep all comfortably and 

287 



Manhood's Morning. 

even fashionably clothed, both summer and 
winter; to live upon seasonable, wholesome 
food, to secure good educational and church ad- 
vantages, to afford time for recreation, enter- 
tainments and amusements, to keep coal in the 
bin, credit in the community and money in the 
bank, to have much to enjoy and more to love 
and to retire at a proper season and enjoy his 
declining years as a reward for his labors. 

The development of the home-life to its full 
and proper extent would obliterate hard times 
forever. Millions of homes should be built at 
once and enough furniture, household goods, 
cooking utensils, pianos, books, paintings, and 
useful and beautiful commodities are needed to 
keep every factory running day and night, and 
every hand and brain, every artist and artisan 
busy for a decade. The universal ownership of 
homes is the palladium of national safety and 
contentment. Then will men have something 
to love and cherish; then will the financial and 
industrial questions settle themselves. Every 
young man should be taught to look forward 
to a home of his own, to pray for it, to strive 
for it, and, if necessary, fight for it. 

Poverty, as it exists to-day, is a concrete 
wrong. It is the mother of crime and the chief 
cause of intemperance, ignorance and degrada- 
tion. That the rich are growing more wealthy 
and miore fortified in their possessions, and the 

288 



What Young Men Must Do. 

poor more dependent and doomed is a disgrace 
as shameful as it is momentous. 

Poverty is chiefly a political condition. While 
it is reached by a thousand paths and while 
much of that which exists shows individual 
faults, yet existing conditions are such as to 
strongly favor poverty and make it the unavoid- 
able lot of multitudes of people. It will never 
be overthrown or greatly lessened until it is 
done through political action. 

It is unmistakably true that the destruction 
of poverty means that the many, instead of the 
few, must control the wealth of the nation. So 
long as extreme wealth is possible and desir- 
able to a few, extreme poverty will be the en- 
forced fate of the many. So long as America 
is the paradise of the rich it will be the purga- 
tory of the poor. 

With rare exceptions, concentrated wealth is 
unscrupulous, heartless and despotic. '^The 
love of money is the root of all evil.'^ The na- 
tion is crowded with men who worship at the 
shrine of greed; mammon is their god; they 
''will be rich,'' and to obtain their goal are will- 
ing to resort to methods ''which drown men in 
destruction and perdition.'' "Avarice and lux- 
ury have been the ruin of every State." May 
it never be said of America that poverty 

''Crushes into dumb despair 
One-half the human race." 



19 



289 



Manhood's Morning. 

When wealth, in the power of its concentra- 
tion, monopoHzes and oppresses, corners and 
crushes; when it grows sordid, heartless and 
despotic; when it brings starvation, rags and 
ignorance ; when it breeds slaves, paupers and 
criminals; when it becomes un-American and 
unjust; when it hedges our pathway with man- 
traps and temptations, and plays upon our pas- 
sions and credulity as strategems of business ; 
when it debases politics, pollutes morals, defies 
law, obliterates the Sabbath and corrupts lit- 
erature; when it disgraces the face of the na- 
tion with haunts of shame and dram-shops that 
ruin one hundred daughters and bury in dis- 
honored graves two hundred sons, every day 
in the year ; when it ceases to be a blessing to 
those who hold it or a benefit to others, then it 
becames a common foe and a national peril, to 
be hated, controlled and scattered. For young 
men to ignore their responsibility under such 
conditions is political and religious perfidy, 
cowardice and treason. 

It is not possible for political isms or politi- 
cal demagogues, hungry for the spoils of of- 
fice, to lessen poverty. These are morbid 
growths upon the body politic and are, of them- 
selves, evils to be routed and destroyed. The 
rich will never antagonize poverty, and their 
benefactions, no matter how princely, can never 
atone for its cause. Help and philanthropy 

290 



What Young Men Must Do. 

cannot substitute inherited rights. It dwarfs 
manhood to trail as the protege and puppet of 
wealth. ''Nine-tenths of the money given to 
benefit the healthy poor does more harm than 
good." Nor can gigantic industries improve 
existing conditions. A century ago Franklin 
said: ''The time will come when men will not 
have to work more than four or five hours 
daily to meet the demands of labor." Labor- 
saving machinery and business combinations are 
making his prophecy true. Human wit was 
never more anxious to curtail expenses, invent 
machines to do the work of men, to concentrate 
force and labor and send men adrift in idleness. 
Mankind must learn to look elsewhere than to 
the rich or to wage-earning for occupation and 
success in life. 

Young men have the inherited right, the 
essential strength and the patriotic incentives to 
overthrow poverty and drive it from the land. 
The conflict is theirs and it belongs to none 
other. Over three million young men vote for 
the first time at each national election. They 
are not simply the "balance of power" but they 
are the power itself. Every vote of theirs 
should go to crush a wrong and free a righteous 
cause and make that cause enthroned. 

Young men have no right to remain passive 
and consign themselves to poverty's enslaving 
and degrading influence and their families to a 

291 



Manhood's Morning. 

life-long struggle against privation. ''He who 
fails to provide for his own house/' writes the 
Apostle, ''denies the faith and is worse than an 
infidel/' "He that despiseth the gain of oppres- 
sions/' says the Prophet, "bread shall be given 
him." No matter what brings poverty to our 
doors it should be feared, hated and assailed 
as desperately as would be a savage wolf that 
seeks to invade our firesides and steal our 
children. 

It is the duty of young men to demand that 
life's pathway reach down to the level of the 
lowest and, unobstructed and broad enough for 
all, reach the summit of the highest possibili- 
ties. Wealth should be the servant of all man- 
kind and the master of none. It should be 
support to the weak, power to the worthy and 
a loyal and potent force in building the nation. 
Wealth should make it possible for all to hon- 
orably succeed and unnecessary for any to 
wholly fail. Wealth should be the possession of 
the people and poverty, in free America, should 
be unknown. 

Young men must forward and exalt the na- 
tion. Great is the work of Americans. We are 
entering upon an era of the world's history sur- 
passing beyond comparison, any past age, 

"We are living, we are dwelling 
In a grand and awful time, 
In an age on ages telling 
To be living is sublime!" 

292 



What Young Men Must Do. 

Confidence in the future has become a part 
of the national faith. Never did the people so 
quickly absorb and implicitly trust in new ideas 
and inventions. Genius and talent no longer 
live and die unappreciated. A market is al- 
ways in waiting for the product of the most 
gifted brain or the more skillful hand. The 
people accept with unbounded confidence every 
worthy contribution to the world's greatness. 

Mechanical invention is so rapid that it is 
revolutionary in its effects. In electricity, 
alone, there are, in the United States of Amer- 
ica, 1,000,000 miles of telegraph, by which are 
sent 65,000,000 messages annually, and there 
are in operation several millions telephones. 
''Electricity," says Chauncey Depew, ''is to be 
largely the substitute for the horse; . . . 
it is to furnish light for dwelling and factory, 
for hospital and highway ; it is to give heat for 
cooking and for comfort ; it is to be the power 
for the machinery of mill and the press of news- 
paper ; it is to be the motor for transportation 
by land and sea/' From the coal mines come 
not only heat, light and power, but any color, 
from printer's ink to the tint of the rarest 
flower; any flavor, from the strawberry or 
peach to the substance, saccharine, two hundred 
times sweeter than sugar; and from coal, sci- 
ence has evolved remedies that will cool the fe- 
vered brow and modify the bounding pulse, 

293 



Manhood's Morning. 

soothe the excited nerves and bring quiet and 
refreshing sleep. Never were the hidden and 
priceless treasures of earth so rapidly discov- 
ered and transformed into utility as now. New 
uses for air, water, and the elements of nature 
follow each other in rapid succession. Ni- 
agara has entered upon a multiform mission of 
usefulness, and is driving the wheels of in- 
dustry, turning darkness into light and carrying 
mankind to and fro by transmitted power. All 
nature, it would seem, has become enchanted 
and is offering itself as a sacrifice in man's be- 
half, and, with startling possibilities and magic 
powers, is following his bidding. 

And we will not stop in our onward march. 
For a decade the advent of a ''New South,'' 
the costliest possession that adorns our national 
domain, has led in a general transformation. 
In the great West a cluster of new States have 
won a place upon the American ensign. The 
North and East have ceased to glory in their 
age and, with renewed and more youthful 
vigor, are awakening to a more enterprising 
spirit. The cities and towns have caught the 
inspiration and a new and greater New York, 
a new and more substantial Chicago and a new 
and more modern Philadelphia pass the watch- 
word to smaller cities, towns and hamlets until 
with renewed zeal and energy, the nation is 
filled with industry, bustle and enterprise. 

294 



What Young Men Must Do. 

Politics is feeling the force of improvement. 
Antiquated notions and fossilized issues are 
ceasing to command support, and the questions 
and issues of the new age are demanding the 
attention of patriotic and thoughtful men. 

The Church is renewing her youth, and, like 
a bride clad in wedding garments, she is invit- 
ing the young and vigorous to her sanctuaries. 
'^Lift up your eyes,'' says an eminent writer, 
''and you may see another stadium of history 
advancing. Its aim will be to realize the 
Christianity of Christ Himself, which is about 
to renew its youth by taking to heart the Ser- 
mon on the Mount. He that sitteth on the 
throne is saying: 'Behold I make all things 
new/ This earth is yet to be redeemed, soul 
and body with all its peoples, occupations and 
interests.' " Glorious thought ! Wonderful 
consummation ! Blessed is he who helps ! 

All about us are the inspiring awakenings 
of a new century — the beginning of another 
thousand years. The progress of the past and 
the activity of the present will add momentum 
to the future and it is unspeakably full of 
promise. 'The future is lighted up for us," 
says John Fiske, "with the radiant colors of 
hope. Strife and sorrow will disappear. Peace 
and love shall reign supreme. The dream of 
the poets, the lesson of the priest and prophet, 
the inspiration of the great musician, is con- 

295 



Manhood's Morning. 

firmed in the light of modern knowledge." Let 
us believe that man will yet banish the dark- 
ness of night and overcome the sting of the 
winter's cold and the oppression of the sum- 
mer's sun ; that he will penetrate the mysteries 
of space and look through the clouded abyss of 
time; that he will destroy ignorance, oppres- 
sion, disease, wickedness and subdue the earth 
unto himself. When man exercises his divinely 
intended dominion over the kingdoms of na- 
ture, the earth in homage will blossom and 
bloom and bear fruit as a tribute to human in- 
dustry, intelligence and virtue. 

The United States is the chosen home of the 
Anglo-Saxon race — the race of virtue, liberty 
and progress. This race, which America is 
destined to develop to the highest perfection, 
has, for twelve centuries, been gaining con- 
quests, growing in influence and in civilization 
until it has become the unrivalled and domin- 
ating race of the earth. 

America has become a World Power. In 
1700 the Anglo-Saxons numbered less than 
6,000,000 souls, while, at the present time, there 
are over 120,000,000. They have increased 
more than five-fold during the present century 
and are multiplying more rapidly than all the 
races of continental Europe combined, and it 
is possible that by the end of another century 

296 



What Young Men Must Do. 

they will outnumber all the civilized nations of 
the earth. 

They are the most powerful and the richest 
nation in the world. They are in possession 
of one-third of the earth and rule over not less 
than 400,000,000 people. They own sixty per 
cent, of the railroads, more than one-half the 
telegraphs and two-thirds of the world's ship- 
ping. The time is not far distant when this 
one race will hold more than one-half of the 
wealth of the globe. 

The Anglo-Saxons are the greatest law- 
making and the most systematic people in the 
world, and they have a genius for organization. 
They framed the Magna Charta of Great Brit- 
ain, '^the first popular basis of human liberty,^' 
the Declaration of Independence and the Con- 
stitution of the United States, which Gladstone 
declared to be '^the most wonderful work ever 
struck off at a given time by the brain or pur- 
pose of man.'' This race enjoys nearly all the 
civil liberty in the world. Its battles have been 
for worthy principles, and its conquests have 
been victories for liberty, justice and truth. 

The Anglo-Saxon is the Christian nation of 
the world. Its religion is the religion of The 
Bible, its God is the Lord and its faith is in the 
Risen Christ. It is the race of heroes, martyrs, 
statesmen, poets, philosophers, scientists, in- 
ventors, scholars and benefactors. It has in- 

297 



Manhood's Morning. 

vented steam-power, railroads, steam naviga- 
tion, telegraphs, the improved printing press, 
the use of ether, the sewing machine, cotton 
gin, spinning* jenny and harvesting machine; 
the value of coal, illuminating gas and the 
power of electricity. 

The Anglo-Saxon race has always been the 
champion and exemplar of high social stand- 
ards. While yet barbarians in the German 
wilds, the fathers and founders of the race were 
^^as pure as the dews the forests shook upon 
their heads.'' Roman historians state that 
''The adulterer was buried alive in the mud, and 
the adulteress was publicly whipped through 
the streets." ''Non forma, non aetate, non 
opibus maritum invenerit." Out of this race 
sprang Chivalry and for a thousand years it 
has taken the lead in high moral reforms and a 
pure family life. Its political, social and relig- 
ious history has been marked by great moral 
uplifts. Beginning with the Reformation and 
Protestantism, Methodism, Presbyterianism, 
Quakerism, Puritanism, Sunday-schools, the 
Temperance Crusade, the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, the Woman's Christian Tem- 
perance Union, the Salvation Army and the 
Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor 
have been organized efforts for a higher and 
cleaner life, and, with one exception, all of 
these were of Anglo-Saxon origin. 

298 



What Young Men Must Do, 

The two great divisions of the Anglo-Saxon 
race, Great Britain and the United States, are 
the most enhghtened, powerful and progres- 
sive nations in the world, and more than one- 
half of the race live in the United States. The 
United States is richer, more energetic and 
progressive than Great Britain, and is more 
Anglo-Saxon than English in its genius and 
typical characteristics. Evidently the North 
American Continent is destined to become the 
future home of the highest expression of this 
great race. 

The United States, to a remarkable degree, 
is adapted to such a people. In climate, pro- 
ductiveness of soil, wealth of mine, water 
power, rivers and geographical and natural ad- 
vantages, nature has been, not only abundant, 
but lavish. 

In climate, the United States is almost per- 
fect. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are 
well developed, but none are so severe or pro- 
longed as to prove debilitating or jnonotonous. 
Rain and sunshine, storm and calm, wind and 
zephyr, succeed each other and form an in- 
teresting panorama, and the weather is always 
a welcome subject for comment. Our agricul- 
tural resources are beyond calculation. We 
grow the kings of human sustenance. Our 
wheat and corn, fruit and cotton, cattle and 
horses, sheep and hogs, on account of their 

299 



Manhood's Morning. 

abundance and perfection, are sought by the 
markets of the world. In manufacturing we 
are developing an era peculiarly our own. 
Abundance of materials, inventive genius and 
diligent enterprise are sending civilizing pro- 
ducts to every corner of the globe. 

Our language is the most flexible, forceful, 
direct and powerful the world has produced. 
It is the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, 
Milton, Burns, Dryden, Addison, Words- 
worth, Macaulay, Scott, Dickens, Tennyson, 
Erskine, Pitt, O'Connell, Wilberforce, John- 
son, Livingstone, Stanley, Gladstone and every 
American statesman, writer, poet, inventor 
and teacher. It is the dominating language of 
the world, to-day. Enshrined in its embrace 
are Liberty, Law, Love and the message of 
Eternal Life. 

The Anglo-Saxon language, of which our 
nation furnishes the highest expression, is bet- 
ter fitted than any other to become the lan- 
guage of the world. Its power to assimilate and 
expand is unlimited. Says Dr. Schafif: 'Tts 
composite character imparts to it a pliability, 
expansiveness and perfectability which no 
other language possesses;'' and in the opinion 
of Dr. Grimm, the eminent philologist, ''in 
wealth, intellectuality and closeness of struc- 
ture, none of all the living languages can be 
compared with it.'' 

300 



What Young Men Must Do. 

The United States is not only ahead of any- 
other nation, but none is achieving so much or 
advancing so rapidly. ''Ten years in Amer- 
ica/' says a noted Englishman, "is half a cen- 
tury of European progress," and our rate of 
speed is rapidly, even amazingly, on the in- 
crease. 

It is self-evident that God designated the 
United States as the Model Republic and the 
great evangelizer of the world. The discovery 
of America was the greatest triumph of civili- 
zation. ''Our whole history,'' says Emerson, 
"seems like a last effort of the Divine Prov- 
dence in behalf of the human race." "The 
Americans," says Herbert Spencer, "may rea- 
sonably look forward to a time when they will 
have produced a civilization grander than the 
world has known." 

The eyes of all lands are upon our own. 
America is the leader, the teacher, the exem- 
plar of the world. Her two evangels are civil 
and religious liberty, and these must be lifted 
high tO' maintain an honored and glorious ca- 
reer. She must lay aside the implements of 
battle and blood and go forth arrayed in the 
emblems of peace. To be as good as our fath- 
ers we must be better ; to serve our generation 
as well as they did theirs we must be stronger 
and wiser. The prophecy of Sumner has come 
to pass: "The national example is more puis- 

301 



Manhood's Morning. 

sant than army or navy for the conquest of the 
world/' 

The chief factor in all these harvests of 
wealth and upward and onward movements, 
have been, and must continue to be, the young 
men of the nation. They are the heirs and 
owners of a sacred and proud inheritance. 
It is for them to accept it, to honor, amplify 
and uphold it and hand it down, even more 
rich in fruitage, to their children. 

As it has been in war so it must be in the 
grandeurs and glories of peace, young men 
must do the work. A noble ancestry admon- 
ishes them and the world turns to them with 
solicitous eyes. Only by morality, by industry, 
by patriotism, by religion and by the cultiva- 
tion of every righteous principle and every 
good habit can they fill their lofty mission and 
transmit, unimpaired, the tenures and triumphs 
of the nation. 



302 



INDEX. 



Addison, Joseph, 87. 
Agassiz, Professor, ^2. 
Alexander the Great, ^z- 
Allen, Grant, on sex in- 
stinct, 233. 
Anglo-Saxon race, 296. 
Astor, John Jacob, 97. 
Audubon, John J., 72. 

Babies, grown up, 139. 

Bachelors, 212. 

Bacon, Lord, 68; on self 

reverence, 220. 
Bacon, Roger, persecuted, 

273. 

Bancroft, George, 79; indus- 
try, 263. 

Barnum, P. T., 97. 

Barr, Amelia E. on training, 
141. 

Beecher, Dr. Lyman, preach- 
ing, 94. 

Beethoven, 88 ; industry, 
266. 

Being something, 222. 

Bernini, 92. 

Best years of life, 37. 

Bible, for young men, 54. 

Billings, Prof. John S., on 
Chastity, 202. 

Billings, Josh, on "down 
hill," 106. 

Blackwell, Dr. S. C., on con- 
tinence, 134. 

Bleyer, Dr. J. M., on pur- 
ity, 203. 

Booth, Edwin, 88. 

Booth, Junius Brutus, 88. 

Boys, ruined early, 152. 

"Breaking Home Ties," 47. 

Bribery, 168. 



Bryant, W. C, 85; writing 
Thanatopsis, 264. 

Brooks, Philip, on one-tal- 
ented, 271. 

Brougham, Lord, ^2', on 
young men, 28; early 
risers, 261. 

Bunyan, John, "Vanity 
Fair," 106; in jail, 2^^. 

Burritt, Elihu, 81. 

Burns, Robert, 87. 

Burke, Edmund, 268. 

Business, corrupt methods 
of, 156. 

Business on large scale, 160. 

Buxton, Sir Fox, on success, 

(>2. 

Byron, Lord, 87. 

Caesar, Augustus, 68. 

Calvin, John, 83. 

Campbell, Thomas, 87. 

Capital, power of, 164. 

Carlyle, Thomas, on looking 
for work, 159. 

Cavendish, Henry, ']->,' 

Century, the new, 295. 

Chapin, Prof. H. D., on 
chastity, 202. 

Chatham, Lord, close stu- 
dent, 262. 

Charles V, 64; a fogy, 275. 

Chesterfield, a painstaker, 

2(>2. 

Child training, 150, 152. 
Childs, George W., 98. 
Chinese Wall, 30. 
Child-bearing opposed, 144. 
Choate, Rufus, 81; a slave 

to study, 263. 
Christians, becoming, 53 j 

derelict, 171. 



303 



Church, failure of, 169; es- 
sential, 245. 

Cicero, 65; close student, 
262. 

Cigars, 118. 

Cigarettes, 118; effects of, 
191. 

Clark, Rev. F. E., 84. 

Clay, Henry, self-training, 
26Z. 

Class distinctions, 173. 

Clough, A. H., power oi 
must, 2$6. 

Clokey, J. W., on vice, 138. 

Coal products, 294. 

Colt, Samuel, 78. 

Cobbett, William, industry, 
262. 

Columbus, unappreciated, 

274. 

Compton, Samuel, 78. 

Companions, good and evil, 
152. 

Comstock, Anthony, on lit- 
erature, 154. 

Confidence in the future, 
293. 

Confucius, 82; rising early, 
220. 

Crosby, Dr. Howard, 286. 

D'Alerabert, 69. 

Dante, 85; his hell, 260. 

Daniel, 100. 

Darwin, Erasmus, 73; on 

time, 26z- 
David, 99; advice, 220. 
Davy, Sir Humphrey, 70. 
DeCaus, steam navigation, 

273- 
DaCosta, Dr. B. D., on vice, 

132. 
Deeds, heroic, 58. 
Demophilus, first fruits, 36. 
Demosthenes, 65; industry, 

261. 
Depew, Chauncey, electricity, 

293. 



Dickens, Chas., 93; on vice, 
263. 

Disease and Death, 206. 

Disraeli, 93; on opportunity, 
220; ridiculed, 275. 

Dore, 91. 

Drummond, Henry, on sin, 
182. 

Dugdale, on heredity, 146. 

Edison, 76; on work, 265. 

Edholm, Mrs. C, on impur- 
ity, 134- 

Education, influence of, 174. 

Electricity, 293. 

Elisha, loi. 

Emerson, 62', on progress, 
256. 

Ericsson, John, 77. 

Everett, Edward, 80; law 
and passion, 224. 

Evarts, Wm. M., on charac- 
ter, 220. 

Evil habits, cost of, 203. 

Europe sends degenerates, 
147. 

Example, guilt weakens, 170. 

Failures in business, 158. 
Families in nation, 162. 
Faraday, Michael, 71. 
Fatherhood, 278. 
Farragut, David, 65. 
Field, Cyrus W., 265. 
Fiske, John, on future, 295. 
Fitch, John, a suicide, 273. 
Fogyism, 271. 
Force of young men, 27. 
Foster, John, 168. 
Fox, George, 82; persecuted, 

215. 
Franklin, 69; on labor, 291. 
Froebel, on training, 194, 

277. 

Gladstone, 66 \ on latent 
spirit, 32; on Constitu* 
tion, 297. 

Galileo, 71; old age, 27 Z' 

Gambling, 128. 



304 



Garfield, on self-help, 46. 

Garrison, Wm. L., 93; op- 
posed, 2'](i. 

Gauss, 69. 

Gay — Lussac, 71. 

Gibbon, Edward, 79; dili- 
gence of, 26Z' 

Girard, Stephen, 97. 

Goethe, 96; industry of, 264. 

Good and evil compared, 175. 

Goodyear, perseverence of, 
265. 

Gould, Jay, 97. 

Gray, Thomas, 87; patience 
of, 264. 

Greeley, Horace, 98. 

Grimm, Dr., on our lan- 
guage, 300. 

Habits, 55; of aged, 185. 
Hamilton, Alexander, (>>]% 

on study, 2(iZ' 
Hamilton, Sir Wm. R., 'j'>,. 
Handel, 89; a worker, 266. 
Hannibal, 64. 
Haydn, 90. 
Harrison, Benjamin, on 

wages, 286. 
Harvey, Dr, discovery, 274. 
Haven, H. P., 275. 
Health and Physique, 2^^. 
Henry, Parick, on self-help, 

220; industry, 2^2. 
Herbert, Hon. H. A., on 

monopolies, 285. 
Heredity, 144, 278. 
Holland, J. G., on youth, 18; 

on temptation, 141; ef- 
fects of vice, 183. 
Holbrook, Mr. M. L., on 

continence, 202. 
Holmes, on opposition, 278. 
Home, leaving, 46; seeking 

a, 48; needed, 288. 
Hopkins, Mark, on efforts, 

256. 
Houghton, Dr. H. C., on 

chastity, 203. 



Hovenden, Thomas, 47. 

Howe, Elias, •](>, 

Howe, Julia Ward, on pas* 

sion, 182. 
Hugo, Victor, 80. 
Humbolt, ^2. 

Hunter, John, industry, 265. 
Huxley, Prof., 192. 

Idleness, enforced, 157, 158. 

Ignorance, 129; must be de- 
stroyed, 280. 

Impurity personal and so- 
cial, 196. 

Immigration, 147; influence 
of 147. 

Indifference, 140. 

Intemperance, 121; effects 
of, 194. 

Instruction regarding sex, 

155. 
Irreverence, 112; effects of, 

186. 
Irving, Washington, 80. 

Jay, John, dy. 

Jefferson, Thomas, (>'j\ on 

tobacco, 192. 
Jenner, Dr., vaccination, 274. 
Jesus Christ, 54, 102. 
Jeremiah^ loi. 
Johnson, Samuel, 95. 
John, the Apostle, 102. 
John, the Baptist, 102. 
Josiah, 100. 
Joseph, 1 01. 
Josephus, the historian, 79. 

Kellogg, Prof. J. H., on to- 
bacco, 192; on vice, 182. 

Kempis, Thos. A., on be- 
ginning, z^. 

Knowledge, advantages of, 
282. 

Labor saving machinery, 160. 

Lafayette, 63. 

Land all taken, 159. 

Large versus small concerns, 
160. 



305 



Lathrops, Miss, Sunday- 
School, 275. 

"Laughing Gas," 70. 

Lawlessness, 136. 

Licentiousness, 131, 198. 

Linnaeus, 78. 

Lincoln, 276. 

Literature, vicious, 152. 

Liquor bill, 213. 

Liszt, 90. 

Livingstone, David, 92. 

Livelihood, difficult, 157. 

Lodge, H. C, on Webster, 
66. 

Longfellow, 86. 

Loomis, S. L., 256. 

Louis XIV, 64. 

Luther, 83; opposed, 275, 

Lytton, Lord, 93. 

Macaulay, Lord, 93; on cot- 
ton-gin, 76. 

Magna, Charta, 298. 

Madison, James, 67. 

Man, study of, 19. 

Marden, O. S., on character, 
220. 

Marrying, 49. 

Massillion, painstaking, 264. 

McCormick's reaper, 75. 

Mead, Prof., on tobacco, 191. 

Melanchthon, Philip, 83. 

Men, young, of nation, 21; 
who are? 22', number in 
U. S., 2y; marriage of, 
49, 211; patriotic, 108; 
morals of, 109, 140; why 
go wrong, 142; manufac- 
factured, 142; out of 
work, 157; fathers of 
posterity, 204; death 
rate among, 206; in so- 
ciety, 206, and vice, 208; 
what must be, 221; high 
aims, 225; what must do, 
257; self-help, 261; must 
work, 261, and health, 
277 'j and ignorance, 280; 



and poverty, 284; exalt 

all nations, 292. 
Mendelssohn, 89; a worker, 

266. 
Methodism, 82. 
Michael Angelo, 92; industry, 

265. 
Milburn, Rev. W. H., 74. 
Millais, 91. 
Milton, 85; on cynics, 112; 

on purity, 240; industry. 

Monopolies, 159, 285. 
Montgomery, James, 86. 
Moody, D. L., 86; on crime, 

138. 
Moore, Thomas, 87. 
Morbid appetites, 146. 
Moral uprightness, 251. 
Morgan, George, 89. 
Morton, Dr. T. G., 76. 
Motley, his industry, 263. « 
Mozart, 88. 
Muller, 79. 

Napoleon, 64; on courage, 

220. 
Nation, progress of, 301. 
Neander, 79, 
"New South," the, 294. 
Newton, 69; industry, 265. 

Occupation, choosing an, 43; 
lack of, 45. 

Opportunity, 51. 

Ovid, 62. 

Page, Prof. C. M., on chas- 
tity, 202. 

Parable of talents, 271. 

Parker, Dr. Willard, on to« 
bacco, 191. 

Parker, Theodore, 95. 

Pascal, 70. 

Patriotism, 2^2. 

Paying the Piper, 183. 

Peloubet, Dr., on the pledge, 
249. 

Penn, Wm., persecuted, 275. 



306 



Pereira, Jonathan, 95. 
Pericles, 2(i2. 
Pessimism, 266. 
Petofi, Alexander, 86. 
Phillips, Wendell, 94; on the 
pledge, 249; hated, 27^). 
Pictures, vulgar, 154. 
Pitt, William, 68; a drudge, 

2(>2. 

Plato, 69; on ignorance, 106. 

Pledge, the, 248. 

Poe, Edgar A., 86; on com- 
posing, 264. 

Politics, corrupt, 169; de- 
mands of, 295. 

Population, of U. S., 27. 

Porter, Prof. E. H., on con- 
tinence, 202. 

Poverty, 163, 284. 

Priestley, Joseph, persecuted, 
274. 

Profanity, 116; effects of, 
187. 

Purity, 282; ennobling, 240. 
\ 

Quacks, pamphlets of, 154; 
and vice, 261. 

Quality, wanted in men, 222. 

Race amalgamation, 147. 

Raphael, 92. 

Reasons men go wrong, 142. 

Reade, Dr. A. A., on to- 
bacco, 192. 

Religion, 53, 170, 242; cari- 
caturing, 171. 

Rich men, 162. 

Right versus wrong, 177 . 

Rousseau, 220. 

Rosini, 90. 

Rubenstein, 90. 

Ruskin, John, 80; on work, 
256. 

Sabbath Day, the, 247. 
Saloons, 122. 
Samson, 100. 
Samuel, 100. 
Saul, King, 99, 



( 



Saul of Tarsus, loi. 

Saxe, on self-help, 46. 

Schaff, Dr., 300. 

Scientific workers, 174. 

Seaver, Dr. S. W., on to- 
bacco, 191. 

Secret sin, 126; effects of, 
197. 

Self-help, 257. 

Sex deterioration, 208. 

Sexual indulgences, 201. 

Sexual nature, 233. 

Shadrach, etc., 102. 

Shakespeare, on man, 18. 

Sheridan, 88. 

Shrady, Dr. G. F., on pur- 
ity, 202 

Smith, Dr. A. J,, on conti* 
nence, 202. 

Smith, Sidney, 62. 

Smoking, 119, 121, 189. 

Society, influences of, 175. 

South, Bishop, on birth, 141. 

Southey, Robert, 85. 

Solomon, 98. 

Spencer, Prof., on tobacco, 
191. 

Sperry, Prof. D. B., on con- 
tinence, 203. 

Spurgeon, C. H., 84. 

Stanley, Henry M., 93. 

Steele, Prof. J. D., on to- 
bacco, 192. 

Stevenson, George, 78, 265. 

Stowell, Dr., on tobacco, 191. 

Strong, Josiah, D. D., on 
vice, 106. 

Sumner, Chas., a worker, 
26Z. 

Sunday work, 148; newspa* 
pers, 152. 

Sun never sets on U. S., 287. 

Talmage, T. DeWitt, man a 

mission, 256. 
Taylor, Bayard, 81. 
Taylor, Jeremy, 84; on wife^ 

241; on sin, 166. 



307 



Teachers, 182. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 85; on 

spring, 236. 
Thomas, Theodore, 90. 
Titcomb, Timothy, 55. 
Tobacco, 117; evils of, 189; 

and crime, 192. 
Training, lack of, 140, 151. 
Todd, John, D. D., on will, 

62, 
Tramps, 136. 
Tyler, John, 67. 
Tyndall, John, 96, 74. 
Thirteen million strong, 19. 

Value of U. S., 162. 

Vandcrbilt, Commodore, 97. 

Venereal diseases, 199. 

Vigilance for the right, 230. 

Vice, 109; suppression of, 
153; contagious, 188; 
cost of, 204; mortality 
and, 216; social effects, 
216; and marriage, 211; 
and business, 213. 

Virgil, 264. 

Vulgarity, 113; in literature, 
152; and profanity, 187. 

Washington, 6z. 
Watterson, Henry, 98. 
Watt, James, 78; industry, 

265; opposed, 27Z' 
Wealth, concentration of, of 

U. S., 161; arbitrary, 

162. 



Webster, Daniel, 65 ; studies, 
262. 

Webster, Prof. David, on 
chastity, 202. 

Webster, Noah, industry of, 
263. 

Webb, Mrs. Dora, on immi- 
grants, 134. 

Weber, 90. 

Wesley, Charles, 82. 

Wesley, John, 82; a worker, 
263; opposed, 275. 

West, Benjamin, 91; dili- 
gence, 266, 

Welty, J. B., on passions, 

Whitney, Eli, yS. 
Whitefield, George, 84. 
Whittier, John G., 86; on 

duty, 106. 
Wife, 49; good and bad, 242. 
Wilberforce, 66) opposed, 

276. 
Wild oats and other weeds, 

107. 
Williams, George, 85. 
Wise, Daniel, on youth, 18; 

advice, 36. 
Women, wage earners, 164; 

voting, 166; loyalty to, 

241. 
Work, 258. 

Wrong, vantage-ground, 178. 
Wyeth, Dr. J. A., on con- 
tinence, 202. 

Young, Dr. Thomas, 73. 



308 



What is said of Manhood's Morning 



From FRANCES E. WILLARD, President National W. C. 
T. U. 

Manhood's Morning is as far from namby-pamby as a 
book can be. Dr. Conwell has read widely and thought pro- 
foundly. He is also warm-blooded and sympathetic; indeed 
he seems to have all the characteristics essential to the writ- 
ing of a helpful book for young men. * * * We advise 
parents to send for it, giving it as a birthday present to their 
sons. 

Rev. M. L. HAINES, First Presbyterian Church, Indian- 
apolis, Ind. (Ex-President Harrison's Pastor.) 

Any parent or friend desirous of conferring a valuable gift 
upon a young man can do so by presenting him with a copy 
of Manhood's Morning. It is a fresh and stimulating book 
and deals in a practical and common sense way with the prob- 
lems of a young man's life in our time. The author holds up 
high ideals and sets forth clearly and convincingly, facts that 
are of the largest importance in the making of manhood. 

Hon. ELI F. RITTER, the eminent Lawyer and Statesman 
of Indiana. 

Manhood's Morning is a book which has evidently been 
prepared with great care and research. It bears the impress 
on every page of the highest motive by its author. If every 
young man in the land could be induced to read and study it, 
it would make a great impression for his good. I take pleas- 
ure in commending this book especially to young men and to 
parents who have the responsibility of their training. 

MARY WOOD-ALLEN, M. D., Ann Arbor, Mich., Author 
and Editor "The New Crusade," 

I have given Manhood's Morning quite a thorough ex- 
amination and like it much. It is inspiring and elevating and 
must be ennobling in its influence. You have done a good 
work for young men and I thank you for it. 

T. J. SANDERS, A. M., Ph. D., President Otterbein Uni- 
versity, Ohio. 

Manhood's Morning is carefully and ably written. The 
book consists of a remarkable series of chapters to young 
men. They will be very stimulating and suggestive. It will 
surely do good. I wish all young men could read it. 



Prof. F. W. STELLHORN, President Capital University, 
Columbus, Ohio. 

Whilst I cannot adopt every single view found in Man- 
hood's Morning^ I am glad to be able to say that it is an 
exceedingly interesting and instructive book. It may some- 
times seem to exaggerate a little the relative importance of 
young men * * * but it cannot but do good wherever it 
goes. God bless the book, its author, and its readers. 

Rev. W. O. FRIES, Westerville, Ohio. 

Manhood's Morning is just such a book as every young 
man should read. Parents can make no better investment 
for their sons than this book. Young men should purchase 
it if they have to go hungry by missing a meal. It is an in- 
spiration. 

Rev. AUSTIN HUNTER, Washington, Ohio. 

I have just finished reading Manhood's Morning. The 
book is great. I recommend it to young and old ones also. 
I predict for it a large sale. 

W. G. HANNA, in Mail-Empire, Toronto, Canada. 

Manhood's Morning exactly meets the case. The title 
represents the theme exactly. It is far and away, the best 
book that has yet appeared on the subject. A copy should 
be in the hands of every young man in Canada. 



Pure Books on Avoided Subjects 



Books for Men 

By Sylvanus Stall, D. D, 

''What a Young Boy Ought to Know/' 
''What a Young Man Ought to Know/' 
''What a Young Husband Ought to Know/' 
"What a Man of 45 Ought to Know/' 

Books for T^omen 

By Mrs. Mary Wood- Allen, M. D., 
And Mrs. Emma F. A. Drake, M. D. 

"What a Young Girl Ought to Know/' 
"What a Young Woman Ought to Know/' 
"What a Young Wife Ought to Know/' 
"What a Woman of 45 Ought to Know/' 



PRICE AND BINDING 

The books are issued in uniform size and but 
one style of binding, and sell in America at |i, in 
Great Britian at 4s., net, per copy, post free, 
whether sold singly or in sets. 

PUBLISHED BY 

IN THE UNITED STATES 

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IN CANADA 

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29-33 Richmond Street West Toronto, Ontario 



^What a Young Boy Ought to 
Know/^ 

BY SYLVANUS STALL, D. D. 

Condensed Table of Contents 
PART I. 
God^s purpose in endowing plants, animals and man 
with reproductive power— The question of the origin of 
life a natural and proper one — Difference betweem creat- 
ing and making— How God now creates or reproduces 
the flowers, insects, fishes and animals — The mamma 
and i>apa plants and the baby plants — The mamma 
and papa nature in the stalk of corn— The two natures 
united m the same flower— Separated in other plants — 
The office of the wind and insects in fertilizing the 
flowers — The mamma and papa natures united in the 
same oyster—The life of the baby oyster— The two na- 
tures separated in the fishes — The eggs and the baby 
fishes— How seeds are made to grow and how eggs are 
hatched— The beautiful lives of parent birds— The 
bird's nest, the eggs and the baby birds — Why the eggs 
of animals may not be exposed in a nest— The nest 
which God has prepared for them — The hatching of the 
egg or the birth of the animal — The creation of Adam 
and Eve — God created man with power s^'milar to his 
creative power— The purity of parentage. 

PART II 

The manner in which the reproducti^re organs are in- 
jured in boys by abuse — Comparative anatomj;, or points 
of resemblance between bodies of birds, animals and 
man — Man the only animal with a perfect hand — With 
the hand he constructs, builds and blesses — With the 
hand he smites, slays and injures others, and degrades 
himself. 

PART III 

The consequences in boys of the abuse of the repro- 
ductive organs — Need of proper information — The moral 
effects first to manifest themselves — How secret sin af- 
fects the character of boys — Effects upon the body and 
the nerves — Effects upon the brain and mind— The 
physical effects that follow. 

PARTS IV and V 
How boys may preserve their bodies in purity and 
strength— Our duty to aid others to avoid pernicious 
habits, and to retain or regain their purity and strength. 

PARTS VI and VII 
How purity and strength may be measurably re= 
gained— The age of adolescence or puberty and its at= 
tendant changes— Its significance and its dangers. 

Price, {^J'JJ'} net, post free 



**What a Young Boy Ought to 
Know" 



For Boys under Sixteen Years of Age 



WHAT EMINENT PEOPLE SAY 

Theodore L* Cuyler, D»D» 

" 'What a Young Boy Ought to Know' ought to be iu 
every home where there is a boy." 

Lady Henry Somerset 

"Calculated to do an immense amount of good. I 
sincerely hope it may find its way to many homes." 

Joseph Cook, D* D., LL* D* 

"It is everywhere suggestive, inspiring and strategic 
in a degree, as I think, not hitherto matched in litera- 
ture of its class." 

Charles h* Thompson, D»D» 

" Why was not this book written centuries ago ? " 

Anthony Comstock 

" It lifts the mind and thoughts upon a high and lofty 
plane upon delicate subjects." 

Edward W. Bok 

"It has appealed to me in a way which no other book 
of its kind has." 

Bishop John H. Vincent, D*D,, LL»D» 

"You have handled with great delicacy and wisdom 
an exceedingly difficult subject." 

John Willis Baer 

" I feel confident that it can do great good, and I mean 
that my boys shall have the contents placed before 
them." 

Mrs» Mary A* Livermore, LL*D^ 

"Full of physiological truths, which all children 
ought to know, at a proper age ; will be read by boys 
without awakening a prurient thought." 

Josiah Strong, D*D» 

"A foolish and culpable silence on the part of most 
parents leaves their children to learn, too often from 
vicious companions, sacred truth in an unhallowed 
way." 



^^What a 



Young Man 
Know/^ 



Ought to 



BY SYLVANUS STALL, D^ D. 
Condensed Table of Contents 

STRENGTH 

The value of physical strength— the weak man handi- 
capped — Three-fold nature of man — Relation of the 
physical, intellectual and moral — Impair one, you injure 
all— The physical foundation — Man's strong sexual na- 
ture — Sexuality strongly marked in all great men — Im- 
portance of manly mastery of sexual nature — Personal 
purity— Only one moral standard for men and women. 

WEAKNESS 

Inherited weakness — How overcome — Acquired weak- 
ness — How produced — The effects of secret vice — What 
should be done — I^osses in sleep — When to consult a 
physician — Danger from quacks and charlatans — What 
are normal and abnormal losses — Medical authorities 
quoted — Subject illustrated — Important directions. 

SOCIAL VICE 

Alarming ignorance concerning the diseases which 
accompany vice — Why physicians do not acquaint their 
patients with the nature of these diseases — The preva- 
valence — All forms of venereal diseases leave terrible 
results — Character and consequences of gonorrhoea— 
lyater complications — Chordee, stricture, blindness, etc. — 
How healthy brides become early and permanent inva- 
lids — Chancroid and chancre — The primary, secondary 
and tertiary forms of syphilis — The beginning, progress 
and end — Can it ever be cured — May the man ever 
marry — Effects upon wife and children. 

THE REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS 

Their purpose and prostitution — Marriage a great 
blessing — Difference between creation and procreation 
— All life from the seed or the egg— The reproduction of 
plants, fishes, birds and animals contrasted— An inter- 
esting study. 

MAN'S RELATION TO WOMAN 

Importance of a right relation to women — The nature 
of marriage — The friends and foes of marriage — Who 
should not marry — The selection pf a wife — Some gen- 
eral rules — Importance of great caution — Causes of un- 
happiness in married life— Early and late marriages. 

HINDRANCES AND HELPS 

The choice of companions, books, pictures, amuse- 
ments, recreations — lyiquors and tobacco — Self-mastery 
— Right aim in life — Industry, early rising — The influ- 
ence of an ennobling affection — Education— The Sab- 
bath, the Church and the Bible. 



{tn 



net, per copy, post free 



''What a Young Man Ought to 
Know/^ 



"What Eminent People Say: 

Francis E. Clark, D. D* 

**0f exceeding value to every youth just en- 
tering upon manhood. It is written reverently 
but very plainly, and I believe will save a multi- 
tude of young men from evils unspeakable. ' ' 

John Clifford, D* D* 

**0ne of the best books for dawning manhood 
that has fallen into my hands. It goes to the 
roots of human living. It is thoroughly manly. 
Dr. Stall has laid the rising generation under 
an immense obligation.'' 

J. 17ilhist Chapman, D* D. 

**I bear willing testimony that I believe this 
book ought to be in the hands of every young 
man in this country." 

Paul F* Munde, M* D., LL* D. 

Professor of Gynaecology in the New York Polyclinic 
and at Dartmouth College, says : 

**I most heartily commend not only the prin- 
ciple but the execution of what it aims to 
teach." 

Eugene H* Porter, M* D*, LL* D. 

President of the Homeopathic Medical Society of the 

State of New York; Professor Materia Medica, 

New York Homeopathic Medical 

College, etc., says : 

**We should especially commend the volume 
for its reliability in statement, and, as a medi- 
cal man, I highly indorse the medical teachings 
of the book. It is trustworthy and sound. It 
is a work which should be in the hands of 
every young man. ' ' 



Commendations of ^* Young Mdivi^^— Continued, 



The Right Rev» William N* McVickar, D* D* 

"I heartily endorse and recommend ' What a Young 
Man ought to Know.' I believe that it strikes at the 
very root of matters, and ought to be instrumental for 
much good.'* 

Ethelbert D* Warf ield, I L* D, 

" The subject is one of the utmost personal and social 
importance, and hitherto has not been treated, so far as 
I am aware, in such a way as to merit the commendation 
of the Christian public." 

Frank W* Ober* 

" I have not only carefully examined the book myself, 
but have submitted it to a competent physician, who has 
for years received the freest confidence of young men. 
I take pleasure in commending the book heartily and 
unqualifiedly to young men. It will save many a young 
fellow from the blast and blight of a befouled manhood, 
wrecked by the wretched blunderings of an ignorant 
youth." 

Frederick Anthony Atkins* 

** Such books as yours have long been needed, and if 
they had appeared sooner many a social wreck, whose 
fall was due to ignorance, might have been saved." 



PRESS NOTICES. 

" One of the best treatises of the sort ever published," 
— Congregationalist. 

"In these books Dr. Stall has done a service for the 
cause of humanity, the cause of purity and righteousness 
among men, which cannot be overestimated." — Christian 
Work. 

*' Will save multitudes of men from the paths of vice 
and ruin." — Christian Advocate. 

"The author is very frank, but in dealing with the 
delicate phases of his subject he is eminently consider- 
ate, and shows consummate good taste." — Cumberland 
Presbyterian. 

" The book will be a true and helpful friend to multi- 
tudes of young women. ' '—The Christian Endeavor World. 



^What a Young Husband Ought 
to Know/^ 



WHAT EMINENT PEOPLE SAY. 



Chas* M* Sheldon, D» D. 

" I believe the book will do great good, and I hope its 
message may be used for the bettering of the homes of 
the world." 

Rev* F, B. Meyer, B* A* 

*'I greatly commend this series of manuals, which are 
written lucidly and purely, and will afford the necessary 
information without pandering to unholy and sensual 
passion. I should like to see a wide and judicious distribu- 
tion of this literature among Christian circles." 

Hon* S* M» Jones 

MAYOR OP TOI.EDO, OHIO 

** I am glad to say that my study of it indicates that you 
have been led by a pure love for your kind to write one 
of the most helpful and valuable books that it has been 
my privilege to see in many days." 

Mrs. May Wright Sewall 

" It will do every young man good who reads it. To 
inculcate in society this sound view that knowledge upon 
these subj ects is not only compatible with delicacy, but 
requisite to it, is one of the most important contempor- 
ary duties of teachers, whether in the pulpit, on the 
rostrum, in the sanctum, or in the class-room," 

Bishop John H» Vincent, D* D*, LL* D^ 

''Straightforward, clean, kind, clear and convincing. 
A copy ought to go with every marriage certificate." 

Rev* Newell Dwight Hillis 

** I have read your book with care and interest. It is a 
wholesome and helpful contribution to a most difficult 
subject, and its reading will help to make the American 
home happier and more safely guarded." 



'''What a Man of Forty-five Ought 
to Know^^ 



PRAISED BY THE PRESS 



"We do not hesitate to recommend." — Experience. 

"A reliable and instructive guide in sexual matters 
and yet pure and chaste in sX.yX^,'"— Journal of Derma- 
tology. 

'* Information of vital importance.'' — Pittsburgh Chris- 
tian Advocate. 

"Written in an honest, frank and fearless way."— 
Christian Standard. 

"It is a clean book which one should sit down to 
alone."— Z"-^^ Evangelist. 

" These books deserve to be circulated by the million." 
— Leslie's Weekly. 

"To many men the guidance of this book will be a 
timely benediction." — Chicago Appeal. 

"The utterance of one who has an accurate knowledge 
of men." — Brooklyn Citizen. 

" It is a helpful book and in all important particulars 
sound in its medical statements."— ^a/Z/wt^r^ Sun. 

"This book is recommendable not only to the intelli- 
gent layman to read himself and hand to others, but 
also to the physician, who ought to welcome it as a 
means to refresh an important part of his physiologic 
knowledge. ' '—A Ikaloidal Clinic. 

" A man who is a fool at forty-five (and there are many 
of them) is pretty hard to manage. There are certain 
things which he ought to know without being told, but 
it is difficult to teach him these things. He needs rea- 
soning with and plain talking to. This book does it in 
a healthy, elevating manner. These cases are often 
very troublesome to the physician. It would be well to 
have this book handy to lend to such patients. This 
course will help the physician to manage his patient and 
help the patient. This book will do much good. There 
has been a need for just such a work." — Medical World. 



JUST PUBLISHED 



A New Devotional Book 



** Faces Toward the Light*' 



SYLVANUS STALL, D.D. 

Author of " Methods of Church Work/' "Five-Minute 

Object Sermons to Children," " Talks to the 

King's Children," "Bible Selections 

for Daily Devotion," etc. 



SOME CHAPTERS IN THE BOOK 

Glory After Gloom. — The Dangerous Hour. — 
The Concealed Future. — Gleaning for Christ. — 
Hunger and Health. — Direction and Destiny. — 
God of the Valleys. — Coins and Christians. — 
Reserved Blessings. — Comfort in Sorrow. — The 
Better Service. — Not Knowing Whither. — Good, 
but Good for Nothing. — No Easy Place. — The 
Dead Prayer Office. — How God Reveals Him- 
self. — Starting Late. — Source of Power. — Toil- 
ing at a Heavy Tow. — What He Gave and What 
He Got. — Vacation Lessons. — Wheat or Weeds, 
etc., etc., etc. 

Price,{^J-^}net, per Copy 



OCT 1M903 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^ : 



029 7890682 



